


our troubles will be miles away

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Series: Trash Triplets AUs. [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Smut, Christmastime Existential Crisis, Daisy is a computer technician, Exes, F/M, Holidays, Kira is gainfully employed in a shit job and could still kick your ass, Law students Rey and Kylo, Meeting the Family, Rey is a law student, Secret Relationship, Smut, Trash Triplets - Freeform, a mild defense of 'baby it's cold outside' made by asshole future lawyer Kylo Ren, inspired by lilithsaur's Trash Triplets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-09-12 15:38:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16875549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: No big deal: Daisy Kenobi and her boyfriend Matt are meeting each other’s families for the first time this Christmas.Except for her sisters and his brothers and all of their secrets, it’s not really for the first time.Rey Kenobi is desperately trying to hide her current secret relationship with his brother, Kylo, so she doesn’t ruin the holiday for her sister.Kira Kenobi just wants to prevent anyone from noticing she sort of used to date Ben, his other brother, despite his increasingly convincing attempts to get back together right under their families’ noses.Han and Leia Organa-Solo are frankly horrified at the prospect of splitting up the sisters for Christmas when the Kenobi Girls’ grandfather is an old family friend; so all three sisters end up invited for Christmas at their farm.Which makes just about everyone’s plans for making this a drama-free holiday impossible.





	1. baby, it's cold outside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilithsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithsaur/gifts).



> Chapter One: Baby, It's Cold Outside by Nate Rateliff & The Night Sweats feat. Julie Davis
> 
> (if this song bugs you the genders are flipped in this version)
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/album/07JfJ1jieRiSHxduXujrgO
> 
> Also, this is a gift for lilithsaur because I love these siblings so much, and her art was really the obsession I needed to get my writing Reylo! Thank you for all the time you've given this fandom, it's inspired so many. I hope I did these triplets justice, because they've been a joy to write so far!

_“Can you tell me how this mole looks?”_

_“Uhhhh….”_ Rey replies in unison with Daisy, both of them squinting and leaning towards their screens as Kira hikes up the hem of her black shirt and twists her spine to enhance their view. Daisy, face timing on her phone, is looking in like a crash-zoomed image of Rey’s own face next to it, her inspection shown from her webcam. When all three are on screen, it’s hard to tell whose face is whose all pixelated up close.

Skyping with sisters is already a weird human ritual. Triplet sisters skyping together should be an anthropological study.

 _“Benign,_ ” Daisy says just as Rey shrugs and interrupts; _“wouldn’t worry about it.”_

Kira shrugs the tee back over her spine and returns to her seat in front of her laptop, but like her sisters, she’s doing eight things at once and the call lapses into a present but distracted silence. It's like how they talk over each other and still understand it all; their thoughts and each other's.

In their hours spent in this state, this is nothing new; Kenobi Sister calls can _decimate_ phone plans. Right now Kira has gone back to her food and painting her nails black at the same time -both of her sisters having warned her a thousand times this was a bad idea and have since given up- and Daisy is quietly tinkering with an old laptop, her phone propped up but only offering a view of her ceiling unless she leans towards the camera.

“Get a second opinion,” Rey adds. She steps away from her computer to turn on the stove, heating up a splash of oil in the pan. Her back is to the computer. They’ll be right where she left them when she turns around.

“Got my second opinion. Got _two_ opinions,” Kira chews, not even looking up from the sloppy manicure she’s giving herself. She's shadowed at her desk, during the kind of winter dusk that hurriedly shutters the sun out of the sky like a drunken party guest. 

Her lighting, Rey holds back the interjection, would be better if she lived in the _house-_

But she doesn't want to wreck a good thing.

When they moved in with their grandparents at a _difficult_ age for girls (and there being three of them must make their grandparents saints in that regard) old Kenobi was nervous about letting them share rooms or do things like homework together. Weary of infighting and distraction. But he was shocked to see about fifteen minutes in, the bickering ceased and they settled down, taking up their books in relative silence. Daisy muttering for synonyms until one sister gave a suggestion when she did her English, then returning quicker, more efficient mental math for whatever Kira was scribbling down, Rey proofreading when asked and given reminders of how to structure equations in return.

“You’re all _quiet,”_ Obi marveled once, at that weird age in their twenties when you can now drink with your guardians. He had a wine flush on his cheeks, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he remembered in awe. “Don’t kill me for saying it, but I thought getting three teenage triplets in the house, young women, you know... _noise._ But you were all so focused.”

Rey fumbles for a wooden spoon and lets the silence wash over her. It’s still weird seeing Kira in a place so familiar in a completely different context. She’d somewhat defiantly claimed the garage back home a few months ago, citing difficulty with roommates. It was convenient; grandad wasn’t getting any younger, but Kira volunteering to take one step back in life wasn’t always just from pure selflessness.

Seeing the bleak concrete walls with posters thrown over them, Kira’s boxing gear in the place of dusty yard equipment, just a mattress resting on the floor, all in the garage where she’d parked her orange bike every day after school was a jarring feeling.

But then again Rey doesn’t like change.

Neither does Kira. Which is why she's in the garage in the first place.

They always thought Daisy was the same way, but Daisy in their twenties is proving to be a continual mystery.

 _“So Christmas,”_ Daisy says quietly, her voice calm, but her phone collapses from its position because she must have knocked it accidentally. It’s hard to see by the naked eye; but she’s nervous. When the phone slides to a stationary place of rest, Rey can see on the video call that her ears are flushed pink. She and Kira catch eyes instantly. They know how to read the sister that is notoriously hard to read.

She wonders why Daisy would be nervous, because they have this conversation every year; their grandfather is notoriously hard to shop for and because of that what they always end up getting for him is, though unintentionally, awful.

But she’s not expecting the next sentence, _“I’m bringing someone.”_

An embarrassed mutter.

“Shit,” Kira deadpans, “For Grandad?”

“For _Kira?”_ Rey tries to hide her amusement. Kira doesn’t even lift her eyes from her nails to quickly flip her off.

“For me,” Daisy says in a hushed tone, placing her cell back in a rested position where she’s comfortably out of frame.

 _“Shit,”_ Kira blurts out again, more passionate this time, just as Rey rushes in with _“Oh, good!”_

Rey, in her own apartment, turns the burner off on the stove. That means business. When she had her routine call to her sisters, she was often doing this exact thing; cooking a briskly prepared dinner for one and paying probably the least attention. Because her laptop was usual placed where they could both see what she was up to at all times, Kira would often bark out celebrity chef impressions to narrate what Rey was doing, _badly._

“Well, uh, also, I’m not going to be over on the day of. We’ll do Christmas Eve with Grandad, but then I’m going to spend Christmas with his family. It seems the fairest that way.”

“Huh,” and through the telepathic, ever-changing, never equilateral triangulation of sisters, Rey can sense Kira sending her _-we need to talk about this privately-_ vibes from her room at home. Though the favoritism didn’t often exclude Daisy; especially considering the usual tension between Rey and Kira she was often needed as a buffer. She was the essential pacifist between the control freak and the rebel butting heads since infancy. But as the two oldest, by a few minutes at least, Rey and Kira could get over any differences in order to be protective of her.

And Daisy…

Daisy was now always a surprise. Their protectiveness when she moved out of their grandfather’s house wasn’t unwarranted. She was a private person, hard to read even in her constant friendliness, hard to gauge the true emotions of even between her fellow triplets. She wasn’t helpless, just hyper-focused to the point of having serious blinders. Kira liked to test this to spike Rey’s blood pressure: once during finals week in high school she made Daisy a study break snack that was just a sandwich of mustard and bread, nothing else, and Daisy ate all of it without looking up from her calculus textbook. Both sisters watching her eat in horror, too ashamed of betraying her trust to ever tell her what they did.

Rey had moments of panic where she pictured Daisy finding the cure to cancer and then immediately walking obliviously into oncoming traffic. Just for one more thing to worry about.

Rey had no idea how Daisy’s personal life was really going since high school; though that’s where many surprises came in. Kira was once tracked down by a friend of Daisy’s on Instagram who wanted to stalk the mysterious sister’s sisters; turns out their youngest triplet was maybe the most popular person on the planet. Going on dates, surrounded by fellow computer tech students who thought she was amazing; maybe having more fun in her twenties than Rey and Kira combined, for all the time spent worrying about her.

Daisy was hard to read in this stuff because she didn’t share much. She shrugged off direct questions about the things she didn’t want to tell her sisters, it was impossible to pry information out of her.

Her inviting someone to Christmas…

It was fucking important.

And to unpack all that _privately_ with Kira, who is dumbly shoveling Chinese food into her gaping mouth to try not to look so apprehensive, they have to wait for Daisy to hang up first.

And this could take _hours._

 

* * *

 

Unlike Kira, Daisy has so much patience she doesn’t even actively know she’s using it.

To be fair, Kira can wait forever for the things she wants without ever settling; but in situations where her time is being wasted, forget it.

So Rey is shooting her fervent, please-don’t-fuck-this-up looks as they try to _pry_ information out of their baby sister. She grits her jaw and tries not to yell every time she gets a bullshit, one-word answer from her.

His name is Matt. He’s a radar technician. They met at work. Tallish. Blondish. Quiet, Daisy guesses.

_How do you say ‘I guess’ about your own boyfriend?_

“Fine.”

“Nice.”

All of Daisy’s filler words that drive Kira nuts; everyone on the planet is _fine_ and _nice,_ according to Daisy. Though she's a bit more prone to strong feelings. Passionate. If she doesn't want to punch your face, she wants to kiss it.

Kira and Daisy have the unique relationship that Kira would _murder_ for Daisy, Daisy is the most verbally honest with her and that means more to her than anything, but if Kira had to get a drink alone with Daisy in a bar she’d rather break a beer bottle and slit her wrists with it than shoot the shit.

It's so much needless work, small talk. She opts for a sullen glare until everyone shuts up.

Or yelling. 

It has to be one or the other. 

“Actually, he’s one of triplets too.”

Rey perks up, her expression a little weird. Big Sister Red Flags, possibly. Maybe because the triplet thing...it makes people feel weird.

It’s like puppies; when multiple puppies do the same thing, everyone freaks out. If a mess of puppies are let loose in a room doing different things, it’s fun but confusing. You have to focus on one. But when they’re all, say, napping in a laundry basket together, a whole litter of them not moving, it’s easy to look at. Cute. But nobody sees a personality in comparing the puppies. They see the unit, they enjoy the identical elements, not the uniqueness.

They're just a thing. It's easy to objectify the identical. Adult triplets are weird, to a lot of people, when they have their own personalities. 

_And that's leaving out all the weird sex stuff guys want to-_

Kira resents being a part of a litter, as the most obvious emotional runt.

Rey, the one contributing to society, Daisy, the one thriving in her field, Kira…

The most physically fit. The one who can throw the sickest punch. And the one who can take one.

They can’t take that much away from her.

Doesn’t means she’s not a mess in comparison.

 _Principled,_ Rey had tactfully said of Kira a few times before. _Loyal,_ Daisy added. Which was a nice way of saying stuck in her ways and resistant to change, getting in her own damn way.

The whole Daisy/boyfriend thing is making her face itch, with the added instant shot of paranoia of-

“Woah, he’s a triplet?” Rey asks after a moment of tense silence. “All boys?”

“Yeah,” Daisy adjusts her glasses. “Remember the Solo triplets from high school? I never actually met Matt back then, we both didn’t do extracurriculars, but he says he remembers you guys.”

_Oh, fuck._

She was hoping the world was larger than it was turning out to be right now. She tries to hide the fact her throat has closed shut, but the usually observant Rey seems equally disturbed.

 _“Oh,”_ Rey keeps stirring.

Rey and Ben Solo had kind of a public loathing of each other over their favorite English teacher; it was pretty common knowledge to anyone who cared about that stuff that they couldn’t stand each other and had to hide it to get their college letters of recommendation from Mr. Skywalker.

Who happened to be the Solo boys’ uncle. Not that Rey fumed about that _constantly._

Daisy would not care about that stuff.

Kira assumes this is why Rey is so visibly uncomfortable, but damn, that was in high school. Let it die. Last week in the store a cheerleader spent ten minutes trying to not feel completely gaslit by Kira for recognizing her from those days. When blatantly denying her name was Kira with her nametag clipped on her shirt didn’t work; she had tried “Oh, _that_ Kira died in a bus crash a year ago,” despite her wearing just as much eyeliner as she did back in high school.

Then she went back to scanning while the probably more mature, _openly-nicer-now_  former classmate stood there, looking lost for words.

“My mistake,” she’d said finally, gathering up her bags, and Kira threw out the third name tag this month. Her assistant manager wasn’t happy about it; but you don’t fire someone at a grocery store two weeks before Christmas. You give them a stern talking to and then send them back to work bagging frozen turkeys.

_Rey still can’t be upset about all that, right?_

If anyone has a right to hate Ben Solo, Kira has earned it tenfold after Rey’s little high school feud-

“Well, that’s so funny!”

Rey is fake cheerful. Kira finds she doesn’t have much to say. All she can think about is the things she _should_ or _shouldn’t_ tell Rey when Daisy hangs up…

There’s a lot she really shouldn’t.

_Like what noises Ben Solo makes when she gets on her knees and-_

“That’s a ton of food,” Daisy observes dryly, watching Rey from her kitchen, and Rey almost drops her pan of stir-fry. One would think this is unnecessary minutia; but it’s that triplet thing. They’ve been watching her cook dinner for however many months since she moved out, and it’s never been _that_ much.

“Yeah, well, finals and all. I feel like I need the extra fuel. I might give it to a neighbor who's sick.”

"Uh huh," Kira eyes Daisy through the lens.

Rey has been seeing someone, but claimed it was nothing to write home about. Until now, apparently. 

Kira’s desk chair creaks as she leans back. 

“So there’s going to be a boyfriend at Christmas,” she points out flatly, and she can see Rey sigh even if her microphone doesn’t pick up the sound.

“It’s not the first time this has happened,” she reminds Kira; Finn was introduced to the family as a boyfriend -one of theirs, but honestly no one could remember which one, not even him- and was a normal addition on the day. It wasn’t unheard of, Kira’s just stubborn to things that don’t feel like her idea, hates surprises, and Matt is a bonafide surprise. “Don’t be jealous just because you still need _us_ to check out your moles.”

“I’ll _always_ check out your moles, Kira,” Daisy doesn’t even look up from her work to make that promise. “And I don’t say they’re benign just to flatter you.”

“Thanks,” Kira actually finds herself smiling. “I’m going to a concert this weekend, you want to come? They need a virgin sacrifice for the encore to work.”

Daisy shivers, just the shoulder that’s visible by her phone’s camera. “No, thanks.”

Her decline is a little more polite than such a worn joke requires. Daisy wouldn’t touch Kira’s record collection with a ten-foot pole. “And I’m spending it with Matt decorating the apartment. There’s this bar near our work that’s doing cocktails and crafts. We’re signed up for the one where we can spray-paint plastic toys neon colors and make garlands out of them. We got this aluminum tree, so we're trying to do bright colors for decorating.”

There’s a moment of pregnant silence; even if she was never going to that concert, Daisy has a thriving, successful, honestly kind of _cool_ life outside of them, and the absence seems pained for a second. Just a second. 

“How’s the gym?” Rey segues, seeming really anxious to drop the boyfriend thing.

Kira shrugs. “I keep asking for more hours, but they give me the hours they can afford to have me, so I’m not quitting the grocery store anytime soon.”

There is a tense, sympathetic silence.

Her breath hisses out of her nose.

She’s not really working two jobs to keep her head above water, she lives at home, and grandad really doesn’t care because three women leaving at once can leave an entire household in the lurch. She works the one shitty job to do the actual job she loves basically for free. That’s not exactly _noble_ to many other people when it’s all revolving around her ability to punch things, hard, but it’s her personal satisfaction.

Sometimes, sisters on a _trajectory_ tend to give her shifty eyes about that, but _trajectory_ seems like a weird way to be dissatisfied about _now._ She’s fine with now. Grandad let her keep her already very personal space at home; in her improvised gym in the garage. The cashier gig has flexible hours. She has money for concerts on the weekends. Her day job might make her miserable; but the communal exhaustion in front of the employee lockers has made it easier for her to bond with middle aged women and teenagers who all have to put up with the same shit as her in a way that she’s _never_ liked teenagers or middle aged women before. And everything she makes is so she can go to the gym at night and teach people to throw their first real punch or to fight with boxers at her skill level and both are incredibly satisfying. Getting to come home somewhere safe and familiar, her muscles rippling from the exertion, and pass out feeling just fine with where she is, is not the tragedy everyone in her life sees it as.

Where she _is_ is not a problem of not being a prodigy, not studying hard enough, or not self-promoting. It’s not about attacking her life in a different way. Her belief in luck and timing and what feels right sounds like pixie dust to her driven and focused sisters. But she's okay with trusting that things are going to work out if she works hard and keeps herself happy.

She’s not a feel-good personal trainer type; honestly instagram was the worst invention for a gym rat like her because it keeps the eye on the types of girls who took everything else from her all of her life.

 _You dated the guy with the wandering eye,_ she tries not to remind herself cruelly. _You let that be the longest relationship of your life. Hot women are always going to exist, and that’s not their fault._

Kira is not unhappy in the way everyone thinks she’s unhappy; jealous of her sister’s brand of success. Future lawyer Rey, Tech Genius Daisy.

Kira’s unhappy because she’s finally locked into a routine that somewhat works for the place she’s in and yet everyone feels so _bad_ for her being there.

Rey is watching her carefully with her arms crossed. She was always the normal one, with the veneer of brilliance. The “Mom” Sister, the oldest, the one with vision and promise.

Kira never promised to be anything she couldn’t deliver. Where she is might be a promise she can keep for a sustained number of years. Satisfied. Content. _Fine._

She defensively shovels another bite into her mouth, staring Rey down through her webcam. She should probably turn on a light, but the only one other than the crappy overhead garage light was a lamp by her just-a-mattress bed. 

“Kira, there was _foil_ in that-”

She was wondering why the first few chews hurt her jaw so much. She doesn’t respond, merely swivels her chin to the side to spit the mouthful of bitten foil and noodles onto the concrete floor. Sometimes she likes that she lives in a garage, even if she can kind of see her breath right now. Less pretense about where stuff goes.

They fall back into sisterly silence. But it’s tenser than usual. Because Daisy still doesn’t know the full-bodied operation she and Rey have to do after she hangs up on the first guy she thought to bring home to meet them.

It’s triplet thing. Tight ranks.

And she’s not sure she wants family get-togethers where she could run into Ben-

It’s well past midnight when Daisy yawns and finally excuses herself from the call to go to bed.

Kira is ready to break something by the time it reaches that point.

There’s a sacred rule about hanging up on one sister to immediately call up the next and talk about her; that it was bitchy and you instead wait for her to hang up to then _continue_ talking on the same call like civilized people. They often _wanted_ to do it to each other; but it was the one golden rule over years of many, many calls where they were ready to hang up and take matter up on a private call. One person leaving a conversational space passively was one thing; initiating contact behind her back was another.

It’s fucking _disloyal;_ and Kira’s frankly not sure if it’s still in place because her sisters agree or if they fear her finding out about it that much.

 

* * *

 

Kylo is going to kill her.

After she hangs up, Rey tentatively cups a hand around his neck, standing behind him from his seat on the couch, a Christmas rerun droning on television that he’s not even watching. He was staring at her Christmas tree for an absurdly long time; and his casual compliments and interest in it really make her perfectionist’s heart burst for him. It's her first tree for her own place. She spent weekends with him buying ornaments from consignment shops and antique stores. Color schemed it and everything. And he doesn't pretend to give a shit, she catches him looking at it sometimes instead of her, and it means a lot to her.

He groans, half-asleep, leaning into her touch.

“All done?”

He’s trying a little too hard to be the perfect boyfriend, and she can feel that image flicker like a mirage over his own, now _more-awake_ annoyance being apparent in his dark eyes. But he’s still doing the nuzzling; playing the passive, rom-com love interest he trains himself to be in the place of anger. That in itself kind of annoys her, but it is him _trying to be good for her;_ and that means a lot.

Progress. They've made a lot of progress together.

“Sorry. Secret Triplet Rule. Kira and I needed to talk afterwards, but if we hung up on Daisy, it would look suspicious.”

“S’kay,” he smiles at her, a little less forced, pressing her hand to his cheek. “Now suppose you pay some attention to-”

“We have a problem,” Rey bites her lip, threading her hands in his hair. He twists on the couch, his hands coming around her waist, not really treating it with the gravity of her tone.

“What’s up?”

He, poor thing, had to sneak his dinner -what was supposed to be _their_ dinner together this week- around Rey clutching her laptop to her chest, faking a computer glitch, so no one would know he was in her apartment. And then sit around the apartment for hours waiting for this call to end. He’d waited out these ridiculously long calls before, but she could tell he was starting to find the practice insane when three quarters of them were spent not even talking.

Once, he caught her doing yoga in her living room with her laptop tucked beside the mat, and the call was _still going_ even with Kira fast asleep on her couch at home _._

_"Rey, this isn't a triplet thing, you guys are just weird."_

“Daisy’s dating your brother.”

“Ben?” his nose wrinkles. “Man. Didn’t know he was going through women _that_ fast.”

She yanks his hair, and he laughs.

_“Matt.”_

“Holy shit,” he looks a little surprised, but then shrugs. Even though they’re both the “oldests” of multiples, he takes his role with little to no seriousness. “Good for Matt.”

Rey takes her role very seriously. It makes sense. It is her place.

Her arms fall around his neck, pressed palm over palm at his sternum, her head up and thoughtful.

“It’s her first real relationship. At least to the point where we’re meeting someone, so he did _something_ right.”

Yet she can’t phrase it like anything but genuine worry. If his hands weren’t on her, she’d be pacing right now. Kylo tilts his head up at her, amused. “He hasn’t introduced us to anyone either; but he is bringing a guest on the day.”

“Yeah…” she purses her lips. “She’s spending Christmas at yours. Huh.”

Funny how when she had thought about doing the same thing this year, she felt her sisters would understand, and yet when Daisy has alternate plans for the holidays, she feels a little hurt.

She had eventually decided _not_ to go to the Solos, and the fact Daisy didn’t make the same choice and instead wanted to abandon them-

“Okay, big sis,” he groans, and hefts her over the back of the couch. She yelps, falling into his lap, but he’s gotten good at making rough landings graceful and she feels more dainty than awkward within seconds of careful arrangement.

Her head rests resentfully on his shoulder.

She should have expected this. The cut-and-dry approach to the issue from him. He came here for date night, and she made him wait out precious, finals-week conquered spare time on her couch watching Hallmark movies without her.

“We can’t ruin this for her.”

He clearly wasn’t expecting this.

_“What?”_

“I have to be home. No upstaging. It feels like I’m trying to one-up her.”

He heaves a frustrated sigh.

_“Okay.”_

He says it like he’s agreeing but cannot be pushed to discussing it further; like this is how he’ll compromise but she can still feel his quiet resentment rising in his chest.

Managing his temper was a huge condition of her even meeting him for a coffee, and that took months of work from him that she would never deprive him credit for. Still, when she sees him swallow it down instead of dealing with it, she can’t help but prod.

“I know it’s when you wanted me to meet your family. Daisy just got first dibs. And she’s... _we_ know what we want, from each other, she and Matt are probably just figuring things out. Let them have Christmas, we can quietly reveal we’re dating at a better time.”

Kylo sighs, stroking his hand over her hip.

“You are really pushing me tonight,” he warns, his tone dangerous more for her libido than anything else.

“I’m shaking in my boots.”

He loves when she bites. It soothes him, her as well, more than any of this happy-couple-role-play they’ve found themselves in. Kylo wormed his way into her heart by finding the wild core of it. Maybe some instinct that told him it was always there.

He’s making steady headway in the contest to smirk like the biggest asshole in the room; but Rey’s in the running as well. She can keep up.

He growls. It tingles in her chest.

“Making me wait. Ignoring me for your sisters _-who aren’t even here-_ and making me eat alone when I came all the way here to be with _you.”_

“I’m sorry,” she buries her face in his neck, selfishly getting two handfuls of his massive shoulders. Groping him like a teenager, “I am really sorry about dinner. Thank you for not just leaving.”

“I took _two_ buses to get here,” he milks it, laughing when she laughs, “it was an ordeal.”

 _“Two buses,”_ she straddles his lap, combing her fingers into his hair. The scar is shadowed by red Christmas lights, she shivers at her tough-looking boyfriend. “Poor baby.”

He stiffens under her, tenderness an odd thing that makes him physically flinch from her. But she’s still not certain…

His hips arch up as he rubs himself against her ass. She loses her breath for a second.

He may not know how to respond to it; but tenderness makes him lose his goddamn mind.

“I know who I’m dealing with,” she purrs, pulling him by the wrists off the couch. He grunts when she hips down from his lap, but is glad to be drawn to her bed. Good thing there’s not even a door between the couch and the bed in the corner of her shitty studio apartment.

He’s lit red and green as she shoves him onto his back, kissing him hard.

“Then you must know you’re not dealing with a patient man.”

He rolls her roughly onto her back, fists in her sweater, and settles himself over her with a graceful, singular motion. She never liked herself at a disadvantage with Kylo, which was why conquering his temper was so essential, because trusting herself to be out of control with this man-

-Well, it could be more fun than scary, but Rey isn’t big on letting go-

His weight rests over her, trusting her to be able to take it. flattening her ribs to push the air out of her lungs. She laughs wheezily, letting him kiss her harder.

He grips the hair tied at the back of her head, hands so big the strands flowing out from under the bun catch in his long fingers. His hands are traveling up and down her bare abdomen; tense with the indication that he can’t hide that he’s annoyed with how tonight turned out.

It’s after midnight. They should be passed out in a fucked-out haze, the apartment torn to shreds, silver tinsel in her hair and a string of Christmas lights tying him to the bed.

“I know what man I’m dealing with,” she insists again, shrugging her sweater over her head when he lifts off with a groan to let the garment drop. He tries to dive and kiss her bare skin, but she holds him back by the shoulders.

Her eyes freeze him in place.

Then, she delicately lifts her hand from one shoulder, his eyes locked on where it travels, down her stomach, and clumsily slides her leggings down past her knees, her legs folding so she can push them off her feet.

“You’re such a bad man,” she husks, her tone slightly mocking, _“Mmm,”_ her fingers part her own sex. She can hear the wet sounds of them working inside; he must hear them too, from the way he is frozen and predatory on top of her. “I know what you are.”

He gives a low, growly noise in the back of his throat, dipping backwards onto his haunches. Even when he lifts away from the hand holding him off of her, he doesn’t touch her. He sits between her knees and watches. She watches him try to roll the tension out of his shoulders, his shirt coming off with a shaking fist pulling it by the back of the neck over his head.

Her fingers block the shallow dip of his tongue, seeking permission to come inside her.

“Let me in,” he curses darkly, and she shakes her head, rolling her hips into her hand.

“Bad man Kylo Ren. Heartless Future Attorney at Law."

He bites her inner thigh, _hard,_ and she whimpers as she draws her hand out of his way. Retreating from the fight she started. 

“Sorry about Christmas,” she threads her fingers in his hair. He bucks, his adam’s apple chording, lips hanging open in an exhalation of pleasure. It’s not a fair time to talk about this. She doesn’t really care.

He rests his mouth against her. Licking obscenely. Not going down without a fight.

The pulls away she she settles into a pleased rhythm against his tongue. She growls. 

He rests his chin on her belly. She tries to lift her hands to move him back, but he holds them down.

“Why be sorry,” that open mouth turns up at the edges in a smile; one that looks like a man toying with his food, “my original plan was stay here all day, pretend we’re snowed in, make a nice little dinner with some roasting hens and those brussel sprouts you like, just the two of us. Doesn’t that sound better than pretending to not rather be doing that separately, with our families?”

“I’m spending Christmas with my sisters,” she bites out, looking honestly a little crestfallen. He sighs, scooping her into his arms by her hips and handling the sex on top of it. He’s kind of a great boyfriend. She’ll keep him around.

He can read her worried face so easily. It wasn’t a subtle face; it made most people in her life take three steps back when they saw it. Countless men telling her to relax. These little pats on the shoulder; _don’t you worry your pretty little head._

Kylo always sifted through that worry like a man panning for gold. There was always a solution buried somewhere in her furrowed brow.

He always told her she was brilliant, she just sometimes needed help to find it.

His eyes aren’t cruel or kind on hers; just honest.

She comes to it on her own, but she’s still annoyed because he’s not letting her tamp it down. The solution seems to be simply to let it go and be happy for her sister; but it still stings.

"So we have to pretend we don't know each other."

"Fuck, Rey, that's insane."

"What else can we do?" she whines in her throat, anxious, and he sighs as she flops back onto the mattress. " _'Actually, Daisy, here's my boyfriend from the Solo family, I had him first?'_ She doesn't know about us. We're the ones hiding-"

"You wanted to hide that we were dating," he points out, his arguing face on even as he fills her pussy with two wet fingers. She bucks, grimacing as she grinds against him; but they're pretty good at sex arguments at this point. This can go on for awhile before she needs him to stop in order to think. _"Not me._ I'm just following your lead here, so fine. We can lie. But it's only going to get worse, Rey, and you're the one who has to plot your way out of this."

"Fine," she glowers at him. Then moans when his thick fingers crook up inside her. 

"And I'm getting fantastically laid through New Years. The second the semester is over, you're mine. No complaining. Don't even bring clothes to my place. And no matter who's dating who in January, you're telling your family about us. I'm tired of hiding."

"Some big demands," she pulls his hair with a grunt. "You don't make the rules here-"

He licks her clit messily, bowing his head to lap at her sex until she gasps. 

"I love you," he snaps at her, mouth gleaming with her wetness and red and green light. Her vision fuzzes, focusing on him at the center. "So I'm going to need a little more than this, unless you're embarrassed of me."

Her thighs wrap around his head; argument over, as she falls back. She can feel his fervor for her cunt pick up as she surrenders. He has her unwrapped and ready to open within seconds. Her legs spasm and twitch around his dark hair. 

And it's not because she's romantic mush for him with so few words.

"I'm not embarrassed of you," she whispers huskily when he's done, his head rested under her breasts. Snuggled in the blankets. 

"You could make more of an effort to parade how obviously lucky you are to have me from time to time."

But he just goes back to kissing her breast.

"We'll tell them after Christmas," she swallows, her throat suddenly dry. She is not looking forward to that.

 _"Thank you,"_ he groans, cranky when he shifts on her bed. Cramping from lying still, all hunched over her body.

“Ugh,” she groans when _‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’_ pops onto the Christmas playlist that's still playing. A soft, acoustic, jazzy cover full of dueling, husky voices.

Kylo smirks at her.

“It’s a good song.”

“It’s gross.”

He shrugs, peeling the covers away to dot her freckles with little kisses. She lies back, grouchy that he wasn’t chivalrous enough to dart across the room to change the song to suit her wishes like Good Boyfriend Kylo Ren would do.

He’s in bed. He’s not a fucking boy scout in bed.

“Just ignore the lyrics. Or consider that in the 1950’s, relationships were often much coyer in media representation because of strict censorship. His sexuality had to have a prudish point of view conflicting with him and women were required to uphold moral decency. And she is probably very much into him because every excuse she gives involves the wishes of a conservative third party; not her own disinterest. He’s helping her become a sexually liberated woman in a broken society, Rey.”

“You’re not going to be a better lawyer than me,” she grumbles, but he just keeps kissing her belly. “It’s coercion.”

“Whatever works,” he shrugs, a wicked look on his face.

“yeah, like putting something in her drink-”

“No human being responds to someone drugging them with, _‘say, pal, what’d you slip me?’_ she probably just means something stronger than champagne because it’s the 1950’s.”

And that’s the last he says when he proves his point that a little persuasion goes a long way for an existing connection; no matter the circumstances. His tongue splits her lips and strokes her, long and slow, and she’s boneless under him.

Having a man eat you out for the second time in one evening while “Baby It’s Cold Outside” plays _shouldn’t_ be its own thing; but it is. It really is. She half-imagines herself with her arm slung through one coat-sleeve, blindly reaching for her scarf as Kylo sucks between her legs with her pressed to the front door. A blizzard keeping her from going home, to her excuses and her responsibilities. Snowed in alone, like how he wants to spend Christmas with her.

She threads her fingers in his hair, sitting up to watch him work. Their sex life has always been intense, but this burn for him is different. With her legs held loosely open, her knees bent along his body and both of them hunched close...it kinds of feels like cuddling. He’s not trying to be in control of her, or her trying to reclaim it from him. It’s just...gentle. He can often make her forget the room she’s in, but she’s now intensely aware of their surroundings. The song and the tree and the lights down to the socks that are keeping her feet pleasantly warm as his tongue dances over her clit. She fidgets instead of fights. Open and tender and soft; erotic in a way cuddling isn’t but those emotions don’t fade into the background even with him so dexterously handling her every little shudder and cue.

This warmth in her chest is not what she pictured when friends-with-benefits lapsed into actually hanging out to _okay fine we’re dating._

Even with the wrench thrown into things -he can be flippant all he wants but things are very complicated with the news about Matt and Daisy- this is the first time she has looked at Kylo Ren and thought, despite her protests, they _work_ together.

 _“I really can’t stay,”_ she sings lustily along to the music, head falling forward to brush his hair with a few kisses and giggles.

He doesn’t give his sung reply.

His mouth is otherwise occupied.


	2. It's Christmas (And I Hate You)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kira & Ben-
> 
> Paloma Faith and Josh Weller: It's Christmas (And I Hate You)
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/76Me3svWJJ2w5ZP0CDeVaw

“What the fuck do you mean,  _ ‘Christmas isn’t going to be at home this year’?” _

The  _ only _ perk of Christmas this year to Kira was that she was going to only have to travel as far as across the driveway. 

Her hands shake as she clips on her newest name tag, running late, frustrated, and with a bruised purple thumbnail from a badly-formed punch last night. 

The locker room echoes with her indignation. 

“So Matt’s parents,” she hears Rey adjust the phone to her ear, a rumble, followed by a hiss; which means she’s boarding her bus to class as they talk, Daisy dropped the call an hour ago when her lunch break was over, “are old friends of Grandad’s from way back when. And when they heard they were hosting only  _ one _ of his grandchildren for Christmas, they were horrified, and insisted we all come out for the Holiday. Grandad as well.”

Carefully, with nail scissors, Kira cuts a small circle in the adhesive strip of a Band Aid and plasters it over her nose ring. She has to do this every day, like she’s hiding a zit, because visible facial piercings are banned for employees. Even if half the time the stupid cover falls off before her break. 

There are less rules about facial piercings in her  _ boxing gym _ than there are here.

“Christmas is  _ days _ away. They can’t just invite us to change our plans on such short notice,” Kira’s enraged, as if she ever gave half a shit about arbitrary etiquette like that, “and I can’t fucking go almost an hour out of the way; they’re making me work on Christmas Eve.”

_ “Kira.” _

_ “What?” _

**Kira to Front End. Kira, Front End.**

“I’m only two fucking minutes late,” she snaps at the blaring loudspeaker, rubbing her covered nose, and a few women on their lunch break around her chuckle at her outburst.

Everyone is yelling at her at once.

“You’re  _ working _ on Christmas Eve? Also,” Rey lowers her voice, sounding a little hurt, “Did Daisy tell you where his family lives? When were you guys talking about it?”

_ Oh, shit. _

She pinches her brow in her fingers.

“I got a closing shift on Christmas Eve,” Kira tackles this first. Strategically. “I’ll be here until ten. We’re at least closed on Christmas Day, so…”

“Why didn’t you tell Daisy that before she decided to be at  _ Matt’s _ on Christmas Day? You won’t even be home for the night she was supposed to be here!”

“Because I only just found out.” 

And it didn’t even matter now; she’d be here and everyone would be there. Honestly, everyone in her life is acting like she has control of this shit. 

_ Wouldn’t she like to have it.  _

She slams her locker door shut, the sleeve of her jacket caught hanging out of it. “Okay?”

“When were you guys-”

She crouches to unlock her locker again. This jacket deserves better treatment than to hang out of a dirty communal employee locker.

**Kira to-**

She takes a deep breath, tuning out her store-wide broadcast summons.

“The Solos  _ went to our high school. _ Their dad would have to drive them at the crack of dawn every morning; he’d steal coffee from the teacher’s lounge during first period. Remember?”

_ She’d _ steal coffee with Han.

She always liked Ben’s father. It drove Ben nuts that he had picked out this angry little punk boxer girlfriend who his parents, for whatever reason, wholeheartedly accepted and adored. 

_ Oh, shit. _

This situation is really sinking in now. 

She’s not only going to have to hide that Ben was her ex from her sisters; but hide it  _ with _ Han and Leia there. 

Who maybe mourn her relationship with Ben more than she and Ben do.

Weekends after high school, while she was stuck in community college  -Rey was off somewhere tweedy and sophisticated, Daisy somewhere prestigious and techie- she’d be at the Solo Farm with Ben. 

It was a really magical time; and therefore had to be handled with secrecy. Her sisters had their own separate thing. 

This was hers. 

Letting Leia make her more food than she could ever eat and finding herself talking quietly to his parents. Ben making a rare civil appearance with them for her sake. 

She loved her Grandad and her sisters; but it was a hard house for her to feel listened to amongst all the competition. Ben had always felt the same way, but conveniently, Kylo and Matt were similarly moved out during this phase. 

Ben was  _ also _ out of state for school at the time, and yet he came home to meet Kira instead of Kira going out to see him every single weekend. 

His parents, and their empty nest, really wanted to listen then, especially to a daughter-type as they’d never had that before. So Kira had found herself on a stool at their kitchen island, eating something home-cooked even though it was two in the afternoon, and trying to formulate “a plan” on most Saturdays of her late teens.

“What do you want to do?”

She had shrugged flippantly every time. “Box. Go to concerts. I mean, I’ve never needed much else. I’m just chasing this feeling of endorphins. It’s the only time I feel like...myself. Work is always going to feel like  _ work  _ in comparison.”

Leia smiled secretively. “I like that you just want your mad money to do what you want. I had to be so ready in my teens to inherit the earth. I think the place you’re in is kind of enviable. You don’t need to  _ be _ your work at this age, you know?”

In her current place of employment, she stares at the tile floor under her knees. Breathing heavily.

_ I’m a fucking  _ **_cashier,_ ** _ Leia. _

_ Yeah. Enviable. _

“You knew them in high school? Like, Ben was-”

She forgot Rey was on the line.

“I know you hate Ben,” Kira grits her jaw. “Listen, I have to go.”

She slams her locker shut and buttons up her horrible work smock, cursing under her breath while they call her name for the third time over the loudspeakers. 

The whole place is packed when she has her drawer ready to take off the previous cashier in her assigned lane; Front End’s desperation to place her isn’t personal. They just need someone to be there and only react with relief at her late entrance instead of punishing her when she arrives.

She almost feels a little guilty about it.

This isn’t  _ about _ Kira; or at least she keeps convincing herself of this.

She watches the previous cashier, Phyllis, ring up the last few items, her old hands shaking as she teases the produce bag to the side, this way and that, to key in the code she’s searching for. Everyone in line looks pissed; but everyone in line has looked pissed since the week before Thanksgiving. 

Kira glares, protective of Phyllis, right at those standing in line with her cash drawer clutched to her chest. Lets the eyeliner and the sharp brows speak for her. That and her snarling nose.

Phyllis can be slow. They’ll live.

The afternoon is a blur of purple dusk and borderline verbal abuse. Everything is her fault, yet not at all about her, in the world of customer service. 

_ There should be a twenty items or less lane. _

Keeping her voice -incapable of being friendly- at least restrained;  _ There are, on self-check-out. _

_ I don’t like self-check. _

She has to bite her tongue to keep from muttering:  _ Well, then, I guess I’ll go fuck myself. _

But it’s muted, faded, from her usual impulsive responses today. 

She’s miles away. 

At the Solo farm. 

_ “And what do you want to do, Ben?” Han would level at her boyfriend after her bullshit answer. “What’s your plan.” _

_ Ben would lean back in his chair, stealing cookies from her plate and his arm slung around her hips possessively. _

_ “I’ll probably have my hands full as stay-at-home dad for Kira and my dozens of children.” _

_ At the time, she groaned, because she spent every weekend thinking it was the last, and nothing Ben said romantically mattered, but she was lonely and missing her sisters and this was the person filling a void. _

_ She was really, really stupid to fall for the guy. _

She almost snorts out a laugh in the face of a confused customer at the memory. She could see him with dozens of children  _ already _ scattered around, with many different women.

Where did she want to be? If cashiering was hell, if the gym couldn’t hire her full-time this year and she would never leave the place that had taught her to throw her first punch, if she was resigned to live in her childhood garage?

There. 

She wants to back at the Solo Farm. And maybe only one other person on the planet knew that.

And she obviously couldn’t talk to him about it.

She has to turn in the drawer at the end of the shift, in the absolute chaos that is a Sunday in December. All she wants to do is go home, put on her gloves, and punch something. But as she weaves towards the employee entrance to the office by Pharmacy, she pulls up short for a second. Dead in her tracks. 

She never thought she’d see him again in the dairy aisle. She thought she’d see him again somewhere more realistic for the two of them, like  _ hell, _ for instance.

Ben. 

But  _ not _ Ben.

He looks too happy to see her; soft and open, his lips curled in this gentle smile, like he’s about to beckon her over.

He  _ recognizes _ her, but it’s not how Ben would react to seeing her after-

He flinches and blinks away.

“Oh, you’re  _ Kira.” _

Mistaken identity. Double mistaken identity.

She's a little insulted he seems so burned by the realization.

“Uhhh…”

“Sorry, I’m Kylo.” He sticks out his hand, which she manages to kind of shake with the cash drawer still in her arms. There was no easy way to carry these things. “You’re Rey’s sister?  _ Daisy’s _ sister, I should say. I’m Matt’s brother.”

“Identical,” she swallows. She’s also one of triplets; this should not be so  _ weird _ for her. 

It is weird examining closely on someone who is not herself. The Solo Triplets are hardly a litter of puppies like she feels amongst her sisters. They’re more variations of the same thing...like instead of Kylo being Beach Barbie he is  _ Sporty Solo. _

Only it’s Ben’s face.  _ It is Ben’s face, _ minus the scruffy beard, and a more tailored wool coat in place of Ben’s penchant for a leather jacket, but it is like Ben is looking at her again.

With a friendliness that is now impossible between them. She tries not to let it overwhelm her, or hurt her as much as it threatens to do.

“Yeah, you too,” he smiles to himself. “Sorry, from a distance, I thought you were-” he shakes his head, “I was mistaken. It’s nice to meet you.”

Not a lot of people mistook her for her sisters anymore. Not since she became the loopy-bun-one in a mix of a long braid and a half-ponytail. Nearly never, since she got her hands on her first tube of eyeliner as a teenager. 

Wait, Daisy had met the brothers already?  _ Did that mean she already knew about- _

“Have you  _ met _ Daisy yet?” she blurts out, her tone a little jagged. 

Kylo shuts his mouth for a second. 

_ “What? _ No.”

He looks confused. Then petrified. 

“Uh...no...Rey and I just have a few classes together. I thought you were... _her_ for a second.”

_ “Oh thank God.” _

He raises his eyebrows apprehensively. 

She maybe shouldn’t have sounded so relieved about that.

“I just mean-”

“Oh,  _ hey.” _

She pivots to meet the voice behind her, clutching the cash drawer like a shield. 

Yep. she’s certain this time.

_ Now _ it’s Ben’s face. 

She knows it.

Got that fucking smirk and everything.

“Been a while,” his expression is smug undercut with a current of unreadable energy.

She’s in a fucking  _ smock _ that’s at least a size too big with a cut up band aid on her nose and she’s mentally fried from getting yelled at for hours and scared shitless from what was merely a guy who  _ looked _ like Ben; now she has all that going for her and the real thing smirking down at her like he never broke her heart to begin with.

She’s his ex; and he’s seeing her at a low point. So yeah, she assumes he’s getting off on this a little bit. 

It is impulsive, survivalist bullshit that takes over her mind when she sees his face again, for real this time.

Only one solution comes to mind.

Mistaken Identity.

_ Maybe I can pass it off that I’m Daisy- _

Despite no one  _ ever _ believing her impersonation of Daisy. 

She got caught during gym class  _ doing the much easier part of a triplet-swap _ while Daisy took her chemistry final for her in high school because she beaned a kid too hard with a dodgeball and then laughed. It was the first and last time the sisters, two of which being chronically afraid of breaking any rules, ever tried that.

Still, being desperate, she does the first thing she can think of; flinging her nametag in the opposite direction without looking away from his eyes. 

And accidentally drops an entire cash drawer full of tender all over the floor of a crowded supermarket. 

Coins scatter at her feet in all directions. 

_ Oh. Shit. _

It’s like the entire store goes silent.

She hears Kylo audibly gasp behind her, but Ben doesn’t even flinch. Just getting a good look at her, narrow-eyed, a look she never let him have when she broke up with him. 

Like right now it really is for the last time. 

Except, to her dismay, it isn’t.

She had pictured him, in denial until this point, as out of town, like always. Typical Ben. Not sensing the need to come home. The runaway son. It was too massive to grapple with that reality during her shift. So she ruled it as impossibility. 

Han and Leia were the problem. 

Her sisters were the problem.

She was the problem.

But  _ nope. _

She’s never that lucky. 

The problem is right fucking here.

She was going to have to spend Christmas with Ben.

Getting on her hands and knees to handle the dropped cash drawer actually seems like a relief if it means she can break away from his eyes  _ right now. _

Her shoulders are shaking as she tries to swipe the coins into a pile, with people stepping over her like she’s not even there or staring like she’s coughing up blood in public or something. She would rather be coughing up blood right now.  _ That _ would actually be kind of funny. 

Kylo, from somewhere behind her, is helping. 

Ben is right there.

His hand is on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

He thumbs the brunette strands coming loose from the hair ties at the back of her head.

She shoves his hand aside, scrambling to pick up the contents of the drawer she’s spilled.

No, she’s not okay. She’s in serious shit. And not just because he’s here. It’s like the second she considers herself at her lowest, the universe throws her a few feet deeper. 

“Breathe,” he instructs gently, his large hands working once-sorted pennies and nickels and dimes into a pile for her to shove anxiously into random slots of the drawer. Kylo is making another helpful pile of bills on top of it, ushering people away with a calm, convincing tone that  _ it’s fine _ and  _ it’s being handled. _

“Are you okay?”

There’s an exchange going on between Ben and Kylo, not verbally of course. But if anyone knows when someone is using their psychic triplet powers, it’s Kira, and she covers her face with her hands for a minute while they commune about this weird girl at the grocery store who will be at their home for the holiday. Then she swallows and just goes back to frantically trying to gather up all the money she’s spilled before she’s fired for sure.

“Yeah, I just,”  _ why is her voice so high pitched? _ “I’m going to miss my bus.”

“Kira,” and she can’t even look at him with that firm tone, like she’s going off the deep end of her own emotions again and he can’t be near her without drowning, “Kira, listen to me. I will drive you wherever you need to go. It’s okay. Let’s get this cleaned up.”

Kylo is watching her thoughtfully, which feels even more invasive than Ben’s presumptuous, intimate tone.

“That’s the last of it,” he slips her a five-dollar-bill from his own pocket. “That should cover any of the coins we missed. Your count being  _ over _ instead of under is a good idea today.”

She nods dumbly, her breath coming and going through her lungs very quickly. She tucks the five into the tray of disorganized bills and coins.

“Thank you,” she mutters, not able to meet his eyes. 

Kylo stands first. “You’re practically family now. And it’s Christmas. Ben, you get her home. I’d better get Mom this goddamn goat cheese before she throws a charcuterie plate at me. I’ll see you later. It was nice meeting you, Kira.”

She turns to see the door ajar to the office, a manager staring at her and the mess, and already Kylo standing there explaining with a charming smile that was notably  _ fake. _

“He said his brother bumped into you?”

She plasters on a fake smile. “Yeah, I didn’t see him coming.”

Ben winces and waves a hand guiltily, now complicit in the lie.

There’s a tense jaw, but for some reason her boss seems more preoccupied with impressing Kylo than chastising her.

“We’ll send someone from maintenance to clear the aisle and check if you missed anything.”

“Well, now that that’s settled,” Kylo controls the flow of attention off of her and back to him with a practiced ease, it takes even Kira a few seconds to realize she can look away from whatever bullshit he’s spinning when Ben leans in.

“Kylo’s the future lawyer. He’ll always get you off with just a slap on the wrist.”

And it seems like just that is happening when Kylo nods in their direction before fleeing the scene of the crime, her manager appeased.

And he leaves them seated on the floor of a crowded grocery store.

Ben sighs to himself.

“Kylo’s...authoritative.”

_ “I needed that,” _ Kira swallows, stuffing the totally-useless metal cover onto her drawer. She tries to shove past Ben to get her money, supplemented with five dollars of missing-coin insurance, turned in for the night. 

He grabs the drawer in her hands to hold her steady. She can’t rip it away, not after what she’s done with it this afternoon. She clings. Defensive.

He’s making her look at him, which she resents, because she didn’t realize how much she was unable to until he drew attention to it. 

When their eyes meet, he presses in some intention for her to just calm down. She’s not calm. She’s near tears, and she hates it, so she tightens her jaw and stares back like a challenge.

Ben gives first, with a weary sigh.

“I’ll be waiting outside, okay?”

_ Fuck. _

When _ had  _ she agreed to this arrangement? If she hadn’t definitely missed her bus home by now, she would never even  _ consider _ getting into a car with him.

She hands off her drawer with her face bowed. 

She’s still not processing until she’s at her locker, pulling her jacket on, what’s going to happen when she goes outside. Honestly, the humiliation has kind of numbed her to drum up other possibilities.  With a sigh, she admits to herself that she will take the easy way out, something she never likes to admit, because she’s _ tired.  _

“All ready?

Ben lifts easily off from his seat on the hood of his car when he sees her. She keeps her eyes narrowed. _ It’s just a ride home. _

“How is Kylo getting back?”

Ben shrugs. “The fuck if I know.”

Then he picks the plaster off the side of her nose with his thumb, bearing the ring through her left nostril. She glares up at him.

“Hop in, Baby.”

And there’s no pause, there’s no moment of  _ -oh shit how do we do this- _ they’re both just coming to their sides of the car. The fucker even twirls his keys like he’s driving her off to a late lunch with his parents. 

She settles into her old seat, trying not to look at anything. So her eyes don’t settle on any detail; though whether she doesn’t want to know what’s changed or what’s the same, she isn’t sure. 

“I’m not your baby,” she grinds out between clenched teeth as he starts the car.

He shakes his head. “You always will be.”

High school her would die to hear this declared to tenaciously. When man-whore Ben was going through half the school and she was the one he'd never have. For her own self-preservation, the underhanded flirting coiling hot and slick inside her. Her lust, and more shamefully, her crush, on him keeping her awake at night.

She wanted the one thing she could never have.

To be his _only_ woman.

She punches his arm,  _ hard, _ and he presses her back to her side of the car with a hand on her shoulder without even looking up from reversing out of his parking spot. It’s a gentle push, maybe more of a  _ herding _ motion, distracted, and one he did a lot as her boyfriend.

Punching was always easier than crying.

“You want dinner?”

“What?  _ No,” _ she snaps, resting back in her seat with her arms crossed.

He shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

“Just take me home. You’ve done enough.”

“I didn’t  _ make _ you drop the drawer,” he shakes his head, pulling out of the packed parking lot. Half the people at this store were already here this week; they never stopped coming back, they just halved their orders in preparation for the holidays. The big shop, the secondary shop, the  _ oops-forgot-to-get-lemons _ shop. 

“You snuck up on me.”

“Well, you were going to have to see me eventually. Have to _ talk _ to me again eventually.”

She glares at him, and he laughs.

There maybe was a vow she had made to him that she would never speak to him again; all it took was one accident to get her to break that one pretty easily. 

“So how’s it been?” his voice is fake friendly, rounding a corner with ease. “Work is good? Seeing anyone? Any new piercings I should know about?”

_ “Stop it,” _ her tone is low and dangerous. 

Getting a new piercing wasn’t nearly as fun because there was no one around to be incredibly excited when they found it on her body. People she took home after shows wouldn’t know what wasn’t there before. 

Or treat it with near the reverence that Ben did; regarding it like it was a shiny new toy…

She had done one nipple, then the other, for that exact reason. Recreating the feeling a few months later because the first one had driven him so crazy playing with it against his tongue.

“Just making conversation.”

“Yeah, well, practice some safe topics. Unless you’re going to drop this at the dinner table too. Then I’ll just stay far away.”

He snorts, “I don’t want Daisy and Matt to be dragged through our shit any more than you do. It isn’t fair to them.”

“Then get your act together,” she snaps, leaning her elbow against the window. Then lifting it with a wince because that lean was something she used to do in his car all the time, arguing about words he exchanged with other girls at parties or sulking over pictures posted of him when he was somewhere better; better and far away from her.

“Well, pretending you don’t hate me isn’t something I can do _for you,_ sweetheart.”

She props her feet up on his dashboard. Always drove him nuts when she did that. Would continue to do it to bother him until her dying day. 

“I don’t hate you.”

“That’s a first.”

“You broke my heart, remember?”

“You broke up with  _ me, _ remember?”

“You know what you did.”

He laughs. He makes it sound like the only thing left to do. “I really don’t.”

_ “Loyalty _ is important to me.”

“I was never unfaithful to you,” he glares at her, “I don’t know what convinced you of that. I’ve done everything I can to earn your trust. But if you don’t want to trust me, fine.”

She closes her eyes, groaning because she's tired enough as it is.

“Can we just get through this holiday? Can you just take me home and forget we ever knew each other?”

The words seem to hurt him, from the tension at his throat, but it’s too late to unsay them. Even she knows that isn’t entirely fair. There were good times.

But when he had a fresh start and women hanging off of him, the distance made her constantly feel like shit. 

“I’ve talked to Han and Leia,” his voice is quiet as he turns onto her street. She heaves a sigh of relief,  _ “they get it. _ They have pointed out that we probably can’t hide our past forever, but they’ll keep it private. Leia has no intention of lying, and she’s not toning down that she loves you, Kira, but she’ll be discreet about the nature of our relationship. And you know what?”

_ “What?” _ she snaps back, despite his rhetorical tone. He doesn’t even seem thrown off and continues on without wavering:

He parks in her driveway, right in front of the garage he doesn’t know she’s been living in. “They earned that from you. They  _ care _ about you. If you come to their house and pretend they don’t even exist to you anymore, I’m going to be pissed, okay?”

“I owe more to  _ your parents _ than to whatever residual feelings I have about pissing you off.”

His eyes are straight ahead.

“Glad to know residual feelings are mutual.”

He doesn’t have to sound so bitter about it. Like she’s a monster for ending a relationship on some -founded or unfounded- suspicions.

“Please,” it takes a lot out of her to ask for anything from him, “don’t tell them I’m a cashier.”

He, shockingly, sounds _ hurt. _

“They wouldn’t care.”

She takes a deep breath, staring at the garage door. Her gear sits behind it. She can punch all she wants later. After today, it may take hours to get this anger out.

_“I care,”_ she licks her lips before speaking very robotically, “but if you just want to gloat about what happened today…”

“Baby,” he leans his head back in his seat. “I promise I won’t. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

She shakes off the old feelings that buzz in her ears to hear him call her that.

"I won't tell them," he promises, his voice quiet.

She snorts.

“So what, are you still in love with me or something?”

He turns off the engine.

It’s Ben, so he’s saying it because he goes through women like tissue. It’s Ben, and he’s already broken her heart, so she doubts his sincerity. It’s Ben, and she’s loved the wrong person once before and therefore resents any of her natural softness towards him, but she can’t move the instant he says;

“Massively.”

 

* * *

 

“There’s still pom-poms, if you want ‘em.”

Matt’s glasses hide most of the languorous slide his eyes make from the box in his hands up to her face. But she can just  _ feel _ the slow-brewing incredulity the more he thinks over what she’s offering. 

Like everything he says, his response is careful:

“I think they’re cute,” he promises in his low, quiet voice, assuring her first and foremost of his support even as his ears flush, “I just think that my brothers would kill me if they got a box covered in fuzzy...colorful…”

His soft lips form silent workings for a moment; inaudible, mysterious, a breath almost spiraling up and down his throat as he’s unable to exhale. 

He clears his throat instead of finishing that thought. 

She doesn’t know if it’s the word  _ balls _ or just  _ pom-poms _ he can’t even speak; because each seem like enough to put him in the grave just from pure embarrassment.

He’s blushing, dear thing, all the way to the tips of his ears, and she suppresses the frequent urge to kiss him that rises up once again.  

Her knee tucks its way up onto the seat under her. 

She and Kira are fidgety. Daisy constantly finding some new weird way to perch, Kira tapping, clicking, drumming, twitching. It drives Rey nuts.

Matt has a decent amount of nervous energy, so he never really minds himself. 

She shakes her head, glueing another puff to the wrapped brown paper package. “That’s exactly  _ why _ you should do it.”

He smiles to himself as his hands carefully tie a neat bow. She watches those fingers move gracefully along the silky ribbon. Trying to play the image in reverse in her mind for him to be  _ untying _ them. 

They’ve been quietly working on Christmas wrapping for an hour in companionable silence. She’d seen online somewhere all these crafty, inexpensive ways to dress up simple wrapping paper; so they’re going with a nice brown parchment this year to make it easy. She’s studding her sister’s gifts with a tiny, symmetrical pattern of pom-poms, he’s tying little holly boughs into the twine and ribbon holding his together.

The evening has been...nice. She kind of adores these simple activities with him. Chores or recreation. She likes his big kitchen table, practically a work table with space for snacks and crafts and rolling out blueprints. She likes the comfortable shared silence.

She likes that there’s someone else out there that makes her feel like she did when she was with her sisters. 

Maybe less chaotically, maybe different, because he’s her boyfriend. 

There’s a lot of things Kira has said to her in her life that were intentionally morbid. But there was one night a few years ago where Kira was a little drunk, they were cleaning up a birthday dinner at grandad’s right after Rey was the first to move out of the house. As Daisy scraped food off of a dirty plate before putting it in the dishwasher, Kira threw her arms around her neck. They were breathless, frantically giggling at some weird triplet brand of humor that could not be replicated or explained, and Kira’s weight hunched her so low over the sink her glasses almost slid off of her nose. 

“No one’s ever going to make me laugh like you and Rey do,” Kira rushed out, her tone warm but melancholy. Those strong boxer’s arms holding her in place until she understood her.  _ “Just you two. _ I don’t know if I’ll have this with anyone else.”

And Daisy agreed at the time. 

But it made her sad when she thought about it.

Daisy knew the feelings that mattered to her and she knew what she liked about them. So finding people and places designated to those feelings was basically the whole blueprint for her future. 

Her friends; cheerful, outgoing, willing to try new things.

Her work; challenging, focused, monotonous but nuanced. 

Her boyfriend; relaxed, patient, thoughtful.

Her sisters were always  _ belonging. _

However, there is always that push for independence in your twenties, and being part of a trio was a huge part of needing to find people who teased things out of her. It was in the people you surround yourself with. 

Even if she already had two that, if need be, were  _ it. _

But first she needs to prove to herself, and maybe even to her sisters, that she can be her own person.

“I had this idea,” he meticulously folds the edge of his parchment down so the opener’s fingers won’t grace any sharp edges, “I was fiddling with some of those pipe cleaners at the bar, and I was thinking about how neon signs often use just one curved, one-dimensional line to complete the entire image, and I thought maybe you could do the same with a pipe cleaner to make, you know, those signs you liked so much. For ornaments, if you wanted.”

Which might sound ridiculous, but she’d declared her guilty affection for aluminum trees a few weeks back, the tacky aesthetic that Charlie Brown lambasted, and he’d laughingly agreed that he preferred them too. They’d opted for this shiny silver tree at his place and suddenly she noticed she liked bright colors against it, which led to a holiday rush to make  _ neon _ ornaments for it. 

A flamingo made up of a single, oft-bent line so it would look like the bar’s neon signs. Sure, it didn’t light up, but she was still melting at the core over the way he approached her interest in something.

You like it; here’s how it works.

You like it; here’s how it can be remade again.

You like it; so I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Engineering, as a perspective, doesn’t seem like a particularly romantic one. But he keeps surprising her, and herself, that she didn’t need to be more of a basic person to be understood. Deconstructing herself to be easier, providing instructions, doing half the work for her partner.

He was proving, in a weird way, that she could be herself by his inability to be anyone else. 

They were a spiral of weirdness that spun recklessly together. Suiting each other.

She wants to die of happiness at least five times a day.

“Aren’t you something,” she murmurs softly, her face ducked over the table to hide that she’s smiling like an idiot. “I like that idea.”

Even when he doesn’t look up from his work and his tone is absent because he’s focusing, he makes her feel listened to.

“So you want to do more craft nights, you’re saying,” she presses her knee to his. He holds his breath for a second, letting it slowly release out of his nose when the touch is proven to not be accidental.

“I’d like that.”

She should have thought of crafts with wire; obviously he’d be all over that. Pretty skilled at tampering with it already.

_ “Thanks,” _ she murmurs, as conversing with Matt is often a contest in who can lower their voice the most. He’s got a rumbling bass that has her beat, but she can match it pretty deep. “For doing crafts with me. I know it’s silly, but they make me happy.”

Her brave boyfriend last night, in a neon-lit bar with white tile and flamingos everywhere, manfully helping paint the decorations for her apartment this year. She wasn’t sure if the decor would scare him off, or the amount of people in the place.

He stuck close to her, but the evening went surprisingly well. He smiled tentatively as always when they got a drink in him and got to work with a level of seriousness and focus that meant the world to her. He even got to talking about a movie they had seen together with the couple next to them. A boyfriend so shy makes her nervous, like she has to keep him in a hermit crab tank in her bedroom so nothing breaks his shell. 

The pink neon around them had lit his blonde hair, black at the sideburns, in a wave of color in the same way it tinted his pale skin. She bought a cheaper version of those pink-hued lamps on Amazon right when she got home, wanting to bathe him in the light. 

There is a nesting instinct, not just because of his shell or his tentative nature, but she just wants to build a habitat for him. 

For them.

“Of course,” he looks confused, wielding a scissor blade like a knife, swiping it roughly up the length of a paper ribbon so it released into a tight curl. They googled how to curl a ribbon together just an hour ago; he proved a natural at it, like many things with those hands. She tries not to swoon. “I’m glad you invited me.”

She rests her chin in her hand, raising her eyebrows to try and hide that she’s smiling like an idiot. “Who else would I invite?”

He swallows, shrugging. 

“Probably someone a little cooler.”

“You’re my boyfriend,” she shakes her head. Covering his hand with hers. “Or have you forgotten that? Meeting my family, taking me home for Christmas?”

He bows his head as he laughs. 

She laughs too, but it cracks her open seeing his sheepish expression, his inability to meet her eyes. It’s a nervous laugh, one that ends halfway at the second his does. 

“Yeah, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I didn’t want to make you.”

For the millionth time, she rolls her eyes at him trying to talk her out of it.

“I want to. Matt, seriously. My sisters will love you. Eventually. Sure, they’re territorial, always have been, I just need to learn to set boundaries. We all need to learn to.”

There was a thing with men, how they dove in to make her forget they were a separate body, making her only aware of hers. Which was all well and good, but it put a lot of pressure on  _ her _ and a lot of allotment towards ignoring  _ them. _

Matt held himself rigid, she was always aware of him as an entity completely apart from her own. Even when kissing her. She felt every shudder of his chest, watched every expression of his face.

It was because he fascinated her. She wasn’t drowning in what someone wanted her to feel. It made her feel like she was being treated delicately, because she mattered as an individual, and what she wanted was a little more valuable than a hand on the back of her neck, pushing her down towards an opening pant fly, just because a date went moderately well. Their approach was analytical. In a way not many people bothered with each other. Even if sometimes she wondered if Matt wished she was shut down for him to carefully exam the insides of before restarting; she liked to feel him paging through her as focused as ever.

He was so entirely  _ dear _ to her; the flush on his ears, his inaudible laugh, the careful work of his hands in everything he did.

Even if they had no idea what to do with each other some days. 

His finger taps gently on an angry red mark over her knee, through to hole in her overalls.

“What’s this one from?”

She looks down, brows raised, to see the red arc of a new burn over her leg. “Soldering gun. You’d think I’d get better at handling dangerous machinery instead of just adjusting to being injured by it. But alas.”

He purses his lips, and gets up suddenly, his eyes sort of glazed over. 

He fetches the small first aid kit under his sink without a word. He might as well just tie it to her wrist at this point, with how often he fetches it for her in this weird trance.

She stares at her leg. It’s not even the worst visible mark from the tear in the denim, there’s ones that are years-old that look...well...

“Do they bother you?”

He carefully hooks her knee to drape her thigh over his lap so he can get a better handle on the work he has to do.

“Does what bother me?”

“The marks?”

Daisy’s  _ covered _ in them. Little burns and dead nerves, arches and crosses. Her belly, her hands, her legs. It’s an engineering thing, which has actually gotten better when she’s been mostly doing computer programming, but even though he’s more careful he’s got his own marks on the skin he’s allowed her to see.

She’s just...a little sloppier about it.

All over, frequently new, her skin specked with just as many little scars as there are freckles. 

She doesn’t do it intentionally; but when she gets focused she sort of shakes off the pain in the moment and then looks down later and sees she’s cut open her hand on a sheet of metal or burned herself by a loose spark falling. 

Matt is very precious about them, like the antiseptic he’s rubbing on her skin right now will somehow preserve her, embalm her. He checks his work and sighs before covering her newest mark with a neat ‘x’ of overlapping Band Aids.

“They don’t bother me,” he swipes a small arc on her untouched skin; bearing no marks, clean, underneath the patch job he’s done on her, “we just have to take care of you.”

What this man does to her.

She plants her bare foot above his knee, raising the injury so it’s under his chin. “You forgot…”

Her breath hisses out of her nose. He likes her impish, impulsive side; but it doesn’t often involve touch. 

Sure, they got together because of a kiss she gave him during an argument at the office over a reboot he did on a repair job she was working, but since then...

They’re still shy with each other.

He holds her leg when it shakes, as though keeping it from falling until she’s done what she needs to do, and she slouches in the chair next to him. 

“You need to kiss it,” she says softly, taking the moment to shove her glasses up her nose to hide the look in her eyes.

He is only frozen for a moment, which beats the reaction to their first kiss by about ten minutes, before lowering his mouth to the hole in the denim. His lips brush her skin, and she tries not to whimper.

They’re soft, but there’s a moment of chasteness before he opens his mouth  _ slightly _ to touch the wet of it to her skin. There’s a little sound that comes just from his lips touching her skin.

And her heart drops in her stomach when he latches his mouth to that skin and sucks until she can feel her pulse against his tongue. She whimpers, trembling, as she watches his cheeks hollow.

It's just her knee. It shouldn't feel this good.

When he’s done, he rests her leg back across his lap, not returned to her own chair.

His hand lifts nervously, nervously somehow, still, and slips his fingers under the strap of her overalls. Pulling her gently a few inches forward. Not up to him, just enough to let her know he wanted her to come if she wished. 

She leans in with a smile, brushing her lips over his. He breathes out, always a little anxious of her proximity, but lets her guide their lips with her smile and her own bashfulness, because he’s paying just as close attention to her as she is to him. 

His thumb digs into her hip bone. She squirms in her chair.

“Do you want to...” she swallows, drawing back in her seat.

He raises his eyebrows, focused on her, pressing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. How he can do that without breaking eye contact is astonishing. 

Matt is out of breath, blushing furiously. Waiting for her to finish.

“....do you want to try having sex?”

 

* * *

 

 

Christmas Eve is Kira’s nightmare; and she’s not even at the Solo Farm yet.

It’s funny how previous nightmares can be adjusted to. How they terrorize in the moment, and when viewed a few hours later, are suddenly palatable when the terror was once so acute. It’s like the rest of life, the memory softens and becomes easier to taste. 

She’d take a million more crashing-into-Ben moments over the night shift on Christmas Eve, which is not full of particularly large orders but many frantic ones; people flinging money at her, yelling at the slightest indication their card had an error or that the store was out of parsley. It was higher stakes than groceries ever needed to be, but one of the secrets of the job was that every person takes grocery shopping  _ way _ more personally then they pretend to.

Do not ever fuck with bagging people’s eggs.

She really doesn’t mind the work that much, if you take the people out of it. It’s just a lot of scanning and lifting and repetitive motion. She’s on her feet, which she likes, she can hide behind her screen, which she likes, and it’s fast. All perks suited to her personality. Once it’s clear she’s got a quick head and consistent drawer counts  _ -most of the time- _ the idea that she has to be cheerful isn’t even attempted to be enforced by her managers. It’s an even exchange. Kira doesn’t lose them any money by forgetting to scan under-cart-items; so they don’t tell her to smile, which cynically she likes about it always being a  _ business _ first. Every actual problem not solved by her limited-function-screen is outsourced to a Front End Manager, which is great, she loves getting to sit back while someone else with actual responsibility takes the heat.

How impersonal it is -a job, and one she is only as good at as required- keeps her sharper in the things she actually likes. 

Still, it can dull her spark after a long shift, especially around the holidays, and she’s not exactly excited to spend the late hours of Christmas Eve with Ben, his family, and her family. Rey’s supposed to pick her up at ten, which her sister has already given her a lot of shit about so she doesn’t look forward to the drive over.

Frankly, she’d enjoy it in Rey’s shoes; the excuse to meet the family over brunch and then get to dart out for an hour and a half without seeming rude. 

To catch her breath without seeming rude. To talk shit with your sister. 

After the millionth response to “Hi, how are you?” being interrupted by  _ “Paper  _ **_and_ ** _ plastic.” _ like she isn’t even a person anymore, she’s sort of shaking with rage. She was never in need of a reminder why she didn’t like people very much.

She also never felt like she could explain what she hated about her job, because Rey and Daisy sort of pursed their lips with that obvious, pregnant silence. As though they weren’t going to step in to make her feel better because she  _ deserved _ to feel this way, to motivate her into achieving better things...

Nothing made her feel more alone where she was right now.

And the crux of it all that knocks her out, for every punch she took in her life without flinching, is a woman quietly buying several boxes of candy canes on her food stamps. The politest person she has dealt with all evening, and only achieving that by being mostly silent. 

Kira doesn’t know this woman. She could be handing them out to people in her church, or to her kids and their relatives. She could even be buying them to binge-eat in her car, or trading them for drugs, or licking them down to sharpen into weapons to kill Santa Claus himself. Doesn’t matter. 

It just matters to Kira, somehow, in the way that only this job can make her sad, when someone actually looks at her in the eyes and nods and they both kind of sigh together amidst the chaos of the torn-apart store. This small, unifying look. Over so quickly she may have only imagined it, her throat tightening whenever she replays the interaction in her head.

The last hours sort of melts into her lowering her standards for when she can finally cry. She had designated it for during her shower tonight. It was the only place that ever saw her tears because they could be hidden. Rare as they were; they always went straight down the drain.

Then, she was bargaining. When Rey picked her up, she would have to go home to grab her overnight bag. Game plan; don’t let Rey in, take five minutes, set a timer, let it go. 

Gather herself back up and be undetected in the dark car, appearing perfectly fine by the time she would reach the Solos.

She can always get back up. It’s who she is.

She tries to resist the urge to let herself cry as soon as she gets in Rey’s car. But she starts picturing herself in the seat and how good it may feel to let it go. 

Then she’s softening to the idea of as soon as when she’s got her jacket on and walks outside.

And then she’s punching out.

And putting on that jacket.

And every inch she gave to her anxiety about tonight and the state of the world slides out from underneath her like an avalanche when it’s not Rey waiting for her in the parking lot; it’s Ben. Leaning against his car like he's the coolest thing in the galaxy.

He’s smirking, like the arrangement is funny to him because of how little they both want to be here right now.

But as soon as five minutes ago, Kira was putting  _ a lot  _ of personal faith into being able to actually feel an emotion with the safety of a person with which she shared a womb, and that faith shattering doesn’t keep the tears away.

She just loses it. 

_ “Merry Christmas,” _ Ben’s face falls when he sees her choking back tears. He jogs over to her from the car. “Kira. Are you okay?”

Somehow, the last time she saw him, she managed to get out of that car. She beat the shit out of her punching bag, she stayed late at the gym, she worked out until she almost couldn’t hold herself up.

It’s Ben; so it didn’t mean anything at all.

His arms come around her.

Ben folds her close into himself in tight hug. “Take minute. Breathe.”

She buries her face in that massive chest, choking out things like  _ “tired” _ and  _ “food stamps” _ and  _ “those fucking candy canes.” _

He weathers this pretty calmly; instead of treating her like she was having some kind of breakdown. 

Which she well may be.

“Rey said we’d need to get your stuff,” he rubs her back gently. “We can take as long as you need; but can I at least get you home first?”

_ “Classic Ben,” _ she laughs weakly between shuddery breaths. She punches his shoulder, swinging away like she tripped accidentally into a tender embrace in his arms.

His face is somber.

He swings his keys again, and can’t look at her as they get into the car.

They are quiet the drive to her house. She holds her purse in her lap, this time letting her eyes flit around the front seat. Black beads still hanging from the rearview mirror; they got them at a concert together a few years ago and apparently hadn’t moved since she slung them there. 

She twists them around her fingers, questioning, and he shrugs.

“The beard is filling in nicely,” she mutters, and Ben actually laughs.

“No it isn’t.”

“It really isn’t,” she bites back a grin, ducking her eyes to look into the shadows that devour her legs. 

“Trust me, Kylo has been roasting it the entire visit home. Sorry to steal the thunder from your favorite thing to make fun of.”

She taps her boots under the dashboard, loud enough for him to hear her indication to his  _ real _ baby; the muscle car he fixed up with his dad. “But she’s running faster.”

He smirks, gunning the acceleration just enough to knock her back in her seat. She lets her breath fall out of her chest. 

She missed speeding with him.

The rest of the drive is silent.

She stumbles out of the passenger side, nervous, because he’s idling in front of the garage with the brights on the door. He’s going to find out she’s not sleeping in the room she had before, or in the house at all-

“What are you-”

She swings the garage side-door shut, trying to slip into her concrete, dusty space. 

The lights stay off, it’s a weird experiment she does with herself, leaving them off unless necessary. She can navigate the space in the dark pretty well. 

She strips off her jacket and smock, sighing when the door opens behind her. Of course he followed her in.

“Kira,” he glances around warily. “There’s a house...with like, heating and plumbing, ten yards away.”

She shrugs, brushing her hair only to tie it back into the same three buns.

“I didn’t feel like I belonged in it anymore,” she shrugs, but the sadness of the statement hit.

“Why not?”

He leans back on the counter that still houses her grandad’s dusty tools. He’s a natural addition to this space, ironically, watching her work with her punching bag when they dated. “Is it your sisters leaving?”

Her nostrils flare, and she grabs the outfit she set aside for tonight in her shaking hands. She’s still bleary and wrung-out from work and crying in the parking lot. Still can’t look him in the eyes.

Kira nods for a second. He’s right. She hates it, but he’s right. And she isn’t in a position to push away someone who is trying so hard to understand her.

“I’ve just...been having a hard time recognizing myself, lately,” her face crumples. “and the saddest thing is I’m exactly the same as I’ve always been, so I don’t know why.”

The identity crisis of a middle triplet might be so obvious it would take any therapist mere seconds to place her woes, but Ben nods like he’s the only one in the world listening.

“We don’t have to be anywhere. Why don’t you throw a few punches.”

She rolls her eyes and snorts. “That’ll solve everything.”

He just looks at her, his profile illuminated by the lights from the neighbor’s house.

“Will it make you feel better?”

Her fists clench around the black tank top in her hands. She swallows.

It really would.

She nods.

“Then I can wait. And watch. Not just because watching you punch something makes my dick harder than anything else; but because I care about you.”

Kira rolls her eyes. How charitable of him.

She’s got her usual underthings on; high-necked sports bra and some boyshorts, so she figures why not mess with him a little. She sheds her ripped jeans and rolls out her shoulders, bare from her neck to her long legs. She prowls through the darkness, retrieving her gloves, feeling him watch her as she does it.

“This has always gone one way:” she circles the bag, not looking at him. She punches with a ferocity that has the chains rattling from their mount in the ceiling. “You wear me down. I let you in. You throw it all away.”

“I love you,” he says quietly, but he’s moved into a dark part of the garage where she can’t see his body, let alone his expression. “Through all of that. I break us, you break something, I remain in love with you.”

A high pitched noise pierces from the base of her throat, and she swings her leg to the center of the bag, striking it with the front of her thigh. Kira is shaking. She is shaking and she doesn’t know what to do with this anger anymore. Moving home and moving into the garage and refusing to move on is crashing down on her as Ben narrates from the shadows.

“You knew the posting pictures with half-naked girls would bother me. You knew you couldn’t really fix it when you were far away. You knew all these things and you let me get hurt anyway because you didn’t have control of yourself.”

She takes a deep shuddery breath, before clocking the bag with a punch that takes all her air with it.

All of these things could be true at the same time.

What he said.

What she said.

He appears out of the dark and draws her gloved hand to his cheek. 

“You punch me.” 

He bats her limp fist against his brow. 

“Give me a good shiner for Christmas, Baby. I’ll love it” Ben lowers his voice “it’s what I deserve.”

“Just getting to punch you when you betrayed my trust isn’t enough.”

He swallows, leaning down to look at her sweaty face.

“But it’s what I asked for this year,” he replies soberly, and she starts to yank the velcro of her glove open with her teeth. 

"I don't open myself up like that twice for one person."

"So don't open yourself up like that," Ben sighs through his nose, "and we do this without pretending to be what we're not."

She closes her eyes. "The flirting-"

"I am asking for one more chance. The ways you have looked at me this week...I don't like the guy you see me as. I'd like to be better. It's not worth the seconds of flattery to deal with years of your resentment. I've grown up."

She tosses her gloves aside, a little too violently, at the wall.

"How can we fix it? _You hurt me."_

Her breath shudders in her chest.

He scratches something off her nose.

Her plastered-on piercing cover, forgotten after work.

Then he doesn't let her look away.

Because she couldn't share the most painful thing that had happened to her with anyone. Not even him.

And he couldn't share it either.

"Two people who miss each other this much deserve to give it another shot."

Kira whines in her throat as his face dips close, his arms winding around her bare waist.

He just kisses her.

Even when she grabs at his jeans, his shirt, trying to writhe out of her sporty underthings.

She has drowned in Ben so many times before. The familiarity itself would be enough comfort. And the other things; the physical gratification, her undying interest in those clever eyes, the feeling of being recognized again. Or just how shitty this day has been.

It would feel good to lose control to him tonight.

But if drowning is motivated by being put out of her misery, Ben doesn’t seem to take the hint. They're already in her room. There's a mattress three feet away to fall back on. But nothing else happens with the biggest manwhore she's ever met. 

He shrugs off her hands when they stroke him, he doesn’t pull away to let her undress from the clothes she’s barely wearing to begin with. She’s huffing with frustration, but she does not fight when he hums into her mouth like this is all he  _ can _ do.

Ben just kisses her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a Matt the Radar Technician Stan first and a human being second.
> 
> (Please leave a comment on this story; I am so scared of handling six characters and three ships)


	3. Christmas Wrapping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Wrapping: Summer Camp https://open.spotify.com/track/3W16AwcBtFzJIMxtB0rBHF

“Can we try it this way?”

 _This way_ Daisy feels so open, so exposed, and the absolute comfort of kissing Matt for _hours_ after a quiet evening in at his apartment is steadily deflating out of her like she’s a beach ball with a hole in it.

“Ummm,” she covers her eyes with her forearms. “I mean, if you think it’ll do any good.”

She feels a warm breath ghost across her bare stomach; hitting her skin and expanding outwards like a mushroom cloud.

“Daze,” he murmurs, unsure, “I’m not going to do anything if you don’t want to do it.”

 _“No,”_ she sits up, hand landing on his massive _-and naked-_ shoulder.

She’s a little dizzy because he has never tried out a nickname on her and at that she will lie back and take _anything_ from him tonight.

“We should try it,” she swallows, “it’s a good idea.”

He keeps his eyes on hers, and she’s amazed that he acts like it’s not hard at all to do when her tits are out, so close to his face.

She kisses him gently, gripping his hair in her fingers.

“It’s a really good idea,” she mouths at his lush lower lip, “I don’t not want you to, I just. Sometimes I get surprised at how good you are to me.”

He looks bashful, maybe ashamed “I’m not very good at showing it.”

 _“Yes you are,”_ she balks, pulling his eyes, which went down and then circled around to avoid looking at her naked in front of him, back to hers. “You show me all the time. I don’t know how to measure up to how you make me feel.”

He lies her back down, crawling over her to kiss her. Their glasses get in the way, clacking together, but they’ve gotten good at ignoring that.

Gaining confidence, she curls her hand around his cock. He goes still, and pulls up to be able to look down at her as she works careful, experimental strokes.

She can’t look away from his cock; the red flush at the tip of the organ so much like his blush she wants to smile from it.

“You like touching me.”

Her tongue is caught in her teeth when her eyes fly up to his. She blushes at the surprised tone to his voice.

She’s stalling a little, examining his naked body crouched over her lying prone one to distract from the sex he wants to explore.

But it is true.

His dry, careful observations should not be so arousing but they get her every time.

 _Yes, I’m obviously soaking wet, please ravage your waiting girlfriend tonight_.

He swallows, like his mouth has gone dry.

“You show me,” his fingers dance over her sternum, her violently thrumming heart. “Daisy, you show me everything.”

She squeezes enough to make him hiss before he extracts her hand from his dick.

Hard not to show him _everything_ now, with him crawling backwards down her body. This was what she was apprehensive about; he was going to look at her with his engineering, problem-solving approach, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to have him look at her bare pussy that way-

-his long fingers slide through her lips just once before carefully parting them-

 _“Oh,”_ she grips the pillow under her head, her hips arching.

”But if I can’t-”

He doesn’t look up from her sex, spread open under his face.

“Most women can’t. From what I read, only 18% can achieve orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone. But stimulating you here,” a single finger slides home inside her, which is already wet from his soft, breathy, and so entirely focused tone, “will relax the internal muscles and ease penetration. Because, uh…”

He’s so _red,_ she wants to laugh, but the way he’s crooking his finger is too good to laugh at.

“You’ll fit,” she says, already assured, but the blush just creeps up to his ears.

He has all but verbally expressed concerns over that. He’s a big guy. Daisy isn’t worried: but the little clues he’s given her have proven he is worrying about this fit constantly.

She wants to press further, but then his fingers do before she can in this very conversation, so she’s relaxing her spine into the mattress.

“Don’t take it personally if I can’t cum for you like this,” but her voice is so high-pitched in its defense that they both seem to know she’s probably bluffing that she suspects it won’t happen, “I usually just stroke my clit to get off.”

“Hmm,” he brings up his thumb in a circle over it experimentally, “like this?”

_“Oh!”_

Her hips buck hard and fast against his hand. He smiles, like he got a long-dead piece of hardware running again.

“Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“One more finger,” she slurs, head back over the pillow, her bare shoulders trembling. He takes instruction well, lifting his thumb off of her to thrust a second finger inside her. Her legs tense up and jerk on the sheets as he strokes that spot inside. He rubs a little quicker, which makes her clench up around him, grabbing his shoulders.

It’s a stretch, but not a painful one. She bites down on her lower lip, assisting the slide into her with a press of her hips.

“Good?”

“Good,” she chokes out, her hips wiggling in a little figure eight to try and settle his fingertips in the right place, but it’s all the right place, and she kind of feels like she’s dying in the best way. “Did you.... _research_ this?”

He licks his lips, eyes flickering up to her face. He’s been making little checks on her expressions as he goes, but also seems to sense she wants a little bit of privacy in her bliss.

It’s appreciated.

“Yeah.”

_Of course._

“Can you, I guess instead of thrusting your fingers, can you curl them?”

“Sure,” his tone is helpful, like she has asked him to hand her a screwdriver so she can continue working. Aware, a quick study, he moves so they thrum against that same spot inside her, knowing she wants his touch there.

“Do you want me to touch your clit too?”

She had already forgotten telling him that. His offer. He was trying to compromise.

Stunned, she shakes her head.

He lifts his eyes off his work, and the warmth there that she wants to _try_ is enough to make her _his_ forever.

She covers her face with her hands, whimpering as her hips seize to accept his fingers gently thrusting inside. This is _so much,_ how methodical and sweet he manages to be; and she wants to push herself to be in this moment.

This is coming _for him._

This is new; but it feels like more than she could have ever expected.

“Quicker,” she advises, choking out a breathy moan as he complies. “Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop, _fuck-”_

She grips his hand, holding it deep inside her as his fingers wiggle, to be able to arch her hips in a way that sends her over.

Her climax, as much as she doubted it coming from just his fingers penetrating her, is harsh but quiet. Her face crumples up, eyes squeezed tight, and her hands in clenched fists on the pillow behind her head.

He fingers her like he does all things; with patience, focus, and a quick study of new concepts. She’s blisteringly aroused by the time she comes.

He works her through it diligently.

It feels like he’s fucked her. Completely. She’s so warm inside, flushed, and wet. She thinks the easiest thing in the world would be to pull him on top of her and take him into her.

She opens her thighs properly to show it.

 _“18 percent,”_ Matt reminds her. He sounds so near. When Daisy opens her eyes, he’s hovering over her face.

She can't imagine what he'd feel like her, if her soft cunt can feel so good inside with just his fingers.

He’s leaning over her, and she realizes his apprehension. He is huge above her. _Shredded._ His hand, rubbing comforting circles over her abdomen with his fingers still wet from her, feels massive.

She can’t commit to a reply. While not statistically impossible; she feels like she won the fucking lottery with her little statistical rarity.

“I...didn’t know I could do that,” she admits, her mouth unable to break that open, blissful smile.

When he bends down to kiss her, he murmurs, _“I always knew you were special.”_

 

* * *

 

It is really hard to meet his mother and look her in the eyes after that.

 _“So,”_ Leia has this huge, affectionate smile on her face. Daisy feels at ease already, despite the night before’s activities. “I’m too excited not to ask. _How’s Kira doing?”_

The Solo Farmhouse is lit from the sun reflecting off the picturesque blanket of snow through the windows. What was a flurrying, gray storm when Matt picked her up has now settled over the ground like a soft sigh of pure white. She can see Han and her Grandad out the window, walking through the snow along the property, talking about the old days. Everything inside is decked in red and gold ribbons and fresh winter greenery, it smells like cookies and peppermint, Matt’s parents were totally cool and not-judgemental about giving them a room together.

It is...ideal.

Not that former Christmases were bad. Grandad allowed them to be arranged by three granddaughters with very, very strong and conflicting opinions. Christmas wasn’t coordinated lighting colors and themed trees. It was a clusterfuck of merry and bright; slightly burning over-ambitious recipes (Rey, who had three different things on different burners) or trying to turn sledding into a contact sport (Kira).

This is...pristine, artfully arranged, tasteful; the only thing making her not feel silly or out-of-place is Matt at her side, holding her hand.

And Daisy doesn’t know how to answer the first thing out of Leia’s mouth since they sat down for hot chocolate to properly meet each other.

She falls short of connecting the question and the answer that she certainly did have lying around somewhere, that exists in her mind; like a plug going into the wrong socket. She knows how Kira is doing, kind of, maybe only as much as Kira lets her, but _Conversations with Matt’s Mother =/= Kira?_

At least, she had thought so.

She didn’t think she’d need to access that information even if she did possess it.

“Uhhh,” She takes a sip of hot chocolate to buy some time. Burns her tongue. She almost forgets Matt is there until he presses his hand into her lower back, worried, after she winces in pain.

She swallows, hand fluttering over her mouth.

“Kira’s fine. You know. _Kira.”_

Did Leia know Kira? This is a surprise she is still not fully grasping.

She nods sagely, as if this answers will suffice, waiting for Leia to do the same and change the subject.

Leia does not.

“It’s been a while, I was wondering what she was up to.”

“Uhhhh,” Daisy drawls longer this time, her eyes flickering around to the snowy farmland out the window. She pushes her glasses up her nose, “She’s doing her own thing.”

“Is she working?”

“Got a job at Price Hutt about a year ago. She’s fine with it. She still boxes…”

Leia takes a sip of her drink. Some people doubled down on questions about Kira’s career, Leia at least took the high road and dropped the topic like a hot potato instead splitting hairs about the career options of someone of Kira’s chosen college major. Which was...Daisy wasn’t even entirely sure. Sociology?

“I’m glad she’s still devoted to her hobbies. I _miss_  that girl-”

 _“Mom,”_ Matt hints in a low, sullen voice, and Leia immediately snaps out of it, waving a dismissive hand that she then pats over one of Daisy’s fidgety ones.

“I’m sorry. It’s just been a while and I was worried about her. Glad to hear she’s good. Now Daisy, tell us about how you got _my son_ over to Cantina for a craft night?”

“You told her about that?”

She leans back in her chair to look at him, her face lighting up. She’d told her sisters; but she’d assumed he wouldn’t want to mention the activity to anyone. Matt shrugs, a small smile on his face.

“I had a good time,” Matt replies quietly, and then to Leia, “we’re probably going back. There’s a Build-Your-Own Lego Robot night; Mitaka wants to plan them out beforehand and start a fight club.”

She nudges him with her elbow, smiling.

There’s a cluster of noises from the front door; a lot of heavy feet. Han makes a reappearance from the barn, flanked by two men who look just like Matt -but not blond.

Hasty introductions are made; she is relieved her triplet looks the _least_ like the other two.

Douse Kira, Rey, and Daisy heavily with water and they’re impossible to tell apart. She's not the best with faces, so she doesn't need that problem.

Matt’s green army jacket stands out against the two darkly-clad Solo brothers, Ben’s hair short but shaggy and Kylo’s long but meticulously groomed. She is struck that they are polite to her, careful; Kylo more charming, Ben more genuine.

Then they all move around a few times and she can’t tell them apart anymore.

“I’d think three boys would be interesting,” Daisy quizzes Leia, who shrugs.

“We had the horses, the farm, a lot of space and tractors and chores to tire them out. Han kept them in line, for the most part.”

 _“Bullshit_ that Han was the disciplinarian,” one of the dark-haired brothers snorts.

Matt laughs, instantly more quiet since his brothers’ arrival. She can see how easily he melts into the background, which is a travesty to her, but he doesn't seem to mind it. His arm is slung on the back of Daisy’s chair, an easy claim at possession, but she’d be damned if she didn’t like being claimed.

Leia merely smiles like the Mona Lisa. “But there’s always the troublemaker...”

“Is that me?”

Kylo...or Ben is wedging more marshmallows than seems humanly possible into his mug of cocoa as he asks.

Daisy will figure this out when she gets her bearings. Rey would have it figured out in seconds; so she just had to wait for her to show up before she started using anyone’s first names.

“It’s Kylo, actually. He just made sure that _you_ got caught instead.”

“You can’t prove that,” The one who _must_ be Kylo raises his mug to sip from, and Daisy gets a scent of bourbon for a brief second. She has no idea where he got that from and how he snuck it into his cocoa.

He smiles when he sees her give him a questioning look, passing her the rest of the mini bottle.

“Call it a hunch,” Leia says with a wizened smile, and Kylo even kisses the top of his mother’s head innocently as he passes her to get more napkins from the counter. _“I smell that bourbon._ Hasn’t having two brothers taught you to share?”

"I gave it to Daisy," he replies, scandalized, _"she's our guest."_

There’s the _ding_ of the doorbell this time, and Daisy lets out a sigh of relief. In the rustle to get someone to the door, Matt catches her eye and smiles sympathetically. Before the follow everyone to the front door, she does drain that bourbon.

“It’s overwhelming.”

“I should be used to it,” she apologizes, but he shakes her head.

“I’ve _never_ been used to it.”

Rey is in a soft grey sweater, laden with all the right hostess gifts and her most winning smile.

“Sorry I’m late,” despite hitting that perfect fifteen-minute window to be polite, “you have such a lovely home, Mrs. Solo.”

 _“Organa,”_ Leia replies with a gracious lightness to the correction.

Rey quickly masks her moment of mortification; but Daisy knows it’s going to keep her up at night.

She’s looking at Kylo, for some reason, as she hugs Leia, and Kylo merely shrugs at her. Or Ben. One has a slight beard. The other has a scar. She has to fix the name to the beard one to remember.

Daisy sees the preparatory breath Rey takes. Her sister was always working eight times as hard as anyone else. And seeing that her impression on everyone mattered so much, meeting her sister's boyfriend's family, means a lot to her.

“Hi, I'm Rey,” she waves at the collective group. “We’re going to be doing a lot of name games this weekend,” she jokes, gesturing as if having to adopt awkwardness, as though she wasn’t going to remember everything perfectly.

“Good to see you again, Kenobi. Still bitter about Yale?”

That must have been from Ben. _Oh, he had the beard! Beard, Ben. That was so much easier._

Rey breathes harshly out her nose. “At least for undergrad, I’m over it.”

She can’t still be mad about the Ben thing, could she?

This is bad. Daisy had assumed Rey would be over it by now? Her trajectory was so impressive, she wasn’t really still seething over high school?

“Oh, uh, nice to meet you,” Kylo interrupts, and extends a hand to Rey.

She stares at it. Struck dumb.

Daisy can’t really process what she’s looking at. Rey is studying to become a public defender. She can talk to and deal with everyone. She even had a response for Ben.

Except...Kylo?

Ben raises his eyebrows at his brother. “I thought you said you two had classes together.”

 _“Ohh,”_ Kylo swallows and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. I just don’t like her.”

Rey looks mad enough to spit; but Daisy finds that more interesting than distressing.

Matt is gripping her from behind like a human shield.

 _“Kylo,”_ Leia looks shocked.

“You must be Matt,” Rey breathes out, her smile nearing violent intensity. The last five minutes have felt like an battlefield, “It is so good to meet you.”

Daisy steps out of the way so Matt can get a hug from her sister. Maybe because she kind of wants one from her at this moment.

Weird anomaly for the triplet sisters; they’re all different heights.

Kira’s the tallest, probably stretched out from boxing.

Rey’s smack in the middle.

Daisy is the shortest; by about a strong and noticeable two inches with Rey, three with Kira.

The baby in the most visual sense.

There are family theories about this; but they are just theories. They didn’t exactly have the best birth mother, so Rey insists Daisy must have not gotten the most nutrition in the womb between the three fetuses. Kira jokes, because that’s how she handles guilt in the same way Rey reasons and worries, that she had tried to absorb Daisy, and Rey as well, and become the _Only One Kenobi_ in utero. Grandad smiles and says they are living three different lives and that’s what happens when split embryos become separate people; Daisy never ate broccoli growing up and Rey and Kira did. Simple as that.

Did Daisy realize sometimes her special treatment was because their unprepared, clueless mother might have made the internal scramble for nutrition a bit more of a catfight before they were even sentient and her adult sisters deeply internalized this?

Yes.

And that’s why she was giving them space to figure herself out, outside of being the smallest baby.

When Rey folds her into a quick hug, she feels safe. Belonging. 

And yet, to the person she looks up to as the oldest twin, she sees something weird.

Rey is nervous.

Confident, capable Rey. She is not sailing into this one to handle it. She is _scrambling._

Daisy swallows.

She had maybe suspected she could trust this would be like any other year.

That reassurance she feels, it's not coming from Rey.

It's coming from Matt.

 

* * *

 

This must be what tough love feels like. Or some petty form of vengeance.

But Kylo has to know every time he skirts around her that it still hurts; setting the table, pouring drinks, asking her if she wants the last few crackers on the cheese plate without meeting her eyes. It cuts like a knife.

She can hear him in her head, superimposing the ‘I told you so’ tone; _You said we had to hide. You said we had to be here. You didn’t want it to be just us._

There has to be a happy medium, a compromise, where they can meet in the middle and _casually_ not know each other.

A constant threat of their early relationship, even before it was a romance, was that Kylo couldn’t handle his emotions for her when they weren’t openly reciprocated. She had to be everything or nothing at all.

That was a large part of all of the work they had done that she was so proud of. He had gotten so unbearable, with his complete emotional vacancy where she was involved after she rejected him, that she proposed they study together once a week. Just to prove they could.

He was competitive, as she was. He didn’t back out because it was like a serious dare; and chickening out was something she could feel superior about for the rest of their lives.

Once-a-week study dates were tense, clinical. He had a way of explaining things that was bracingly clear, like grain alcohol, it went down just as burning and hard too. She didn't like him trying to make a student of her.

But Kylo was never a law student. He never acted haggard, run-down by exams, companions in skipping studying to drink or half-assing a single thing. Kylo was _Kylo the future lawyer,_ at all times, and as much as Rey poked fun of it, she also loved it about him back when there wasn’t much else to love.

He would hit the ground running after graduation.

Watching him build cases conflicting to hers, as a study exercise, was fascinating.

Kylo never lied. He never really embellished. But he had this way of adopting the point of view that made people see things his way, even if it was horrible. And he dropped it like a mask when it wasn’t required anymore.

He didn’t lie. Evidenced by his awkward, cold, _I-don’t-like-her_ at the door; he was a terrible liar.

He just hid things remarkably well.

Rey was an empathy lawyer. She had to be; in her preparations to become a humble public defender. Kylo dealt with big cases, he liked messy and complicated with details so gory they’d make her sick.

 _We’re all good, inside_ , she’d try to argue, at her core, was her belief. _We just have to work hard to find it in each other._

 _Then aren’t we all evil,_ he’d reply back, _depending on how you look at it, if we’re all the same?_

Maybe she got tired of arguing. Maybe the work they put in to be friends felt like work well done, or maybe she proved his point that they could never be friends. But unexpectedly, when he was bickering with her about a case, she found herself leaning in to kiss him at their table in the University library, cutting him off mid-sentence.

He didn’t argue with that rebuttal.

The detail of his mother going by her maiden name is not something he’d just _forget._ He omitted it to her on purpose in preparation for this holiday. To make his point; _if we’re strangers, we’re going to be strangers._

That meant no special treatment when Ben starts talking about good times from college to aggravate her over dinner, other than the occasional, _okay, she’s a guest, Ben._

And then she has to pretend she knows nothing about Kylo too.

“The scar is healing up nicely,” Han says bluntly, leaning back in his chair.

It’s like everyone forgets to breathe for five seconds. Kylo especially.

“Thanks, Dad,” he replies smoothly. But she sees it hurts him.

The most cutting is because they technically, based on the hasty excuse, do know each other _-how does Ben know they had a class together?-_ Grandad, who had missed the blow-up at the door, asked about school and they muttered safe answers.

Two of her loved ones are frozen in polite disinterest at something they aren’t supposed to ask questions about -and then she realizes she should be too.

“Really wish I could try the face-scar method of attracting women. I bet it’s a whole other level.”

Ben, that _asshole._

But Kylo actually laughs.

Ben would be just _awful_ enough for Kylo to love.

This was what this holiday should have been. Seeing him with his brothers. Getting to see their dynamic. Meeting them on the right terms.

Kylo raises his eyebrows before he takes a bite: “You want to have an accident?”

“I don’t know how to have an accident the right way, clearly,” Ben is smiling, but she sees, even on his smug face, a touch of concern. Leia is staring at Kylo like he’s going to shatter.

Kylo looks up at Daisy. Not her.

“There was an incident at school. I threw a chair at the wall. The chair threw something back,” he dances his thumb down the pale line slashing his face. “I was in anger management for a while. A good friend got me in a program.”

“Maybe Rey knows them?” Ben adds primly, and she wants to slap the smirk off his face. He can’t know; he’s just being a dick.

She hates, _hates_ this detached story of what happened, and clearly his mother does too.

Leia tries to cling to a technically safe topic, _what type of lawyer was Rey planning on being?_

Kylo leans back in his seat. She sees it in his eyes. He doesn’t have to be good boyfriend Kylo anymore. She rejected his want to tell their families about them, hid him away, and he’s still pissed about not staying home. Then she couldn’t be there for him for the scar story, couldn’t pat his shoulder and kiss him and say she’d be damned if he wasn’t more handsome now.

She said nothing.

So he mutters, “Rey’s not going to be a lawyer. Rey’s just going to stand in a courtroom with a blindfold on and a scale in her hand to personally weigh people’s souls.”

 _“Holy shit,”_ Daisy blurts out, horrified, Leia sends him a look that could peel paint, and Ben’s trying really hard to _pretend_ he’s struggling to hide his laughter when actually he’s showing off just how funny he finds it.

Grandad actually _chuckles,_ but he’s always had a fucked up sense of humor.

“Rey is a deeply principled person. I think we all know she has a sound sense for these things, instinctive, and that we should all just do away with the whole jury idea and let her decide,” he pats her shoulder, the traitor sitting right next to her. Her own _grandfather._ “Of course, both her sisters would say this method was deeply unfair, and since we always need a two-thirds vote, triplets make for a great democracy.”

“Only have to convince one person that way,” Daisy shrugs, taking a sip of wine.

Grandad’s eyes twinkle at her. Matt’s arm slung around the back of her chair curls around her as though Daisy has already talked about this with him; and it hits Rey all at once.

Daisy was that essential person.

Of course, Rey has always felt edged out of the Kira-and-Daisy show. But that was any time Rey might have had to share her, or do something she didn’t want to do because it was _Kira’s_ thing. They were territorial over their youngest sister, possessive, and being her favorite meant that essential two-thirds vote. All based around the empathy levels of a child, a sweet child, but still a child.

Had infantilizing Daisy led her to this moment? Her boyfriend pretending to hate her, her high-school nemesis across the table with that shit-eating grin, her grandad suddenly capable of throwing more shade than she’s ever experienced?

Daisy might not be able to tell her things because she was always trying to make a case for Daisy, her own sister, in the conflict between her and Kira. Daisy never got to really see who she was; just this motherly, perfect, other version who was too reasonable not to agree with.

Companionable silence was easiest for them because it was the only time all three of them had to stop trying so hard.

“Sorry,” Kylo adds, too late, not looking at her. “There was a compliment buried in there somewhere. We’d all be better off in your hands.”

He doesn’t look at her for the rest of the meal.

Clearing the table, he does slide a hand around her hip when no one could see, leaning past her to pick up more dirty forks. His thumb slips under the hem of he sweater, tracing a circle on her bare stomach.

She doesn’t want to melt at the contact. She’s mad at him, damn it, but she does push back her hips to lean herself against him, lips pressed tight together, because it sucks being strangers with him on Christmas Eve.

“Don’t,” she glowers at him, peering back to see if anyone in the kitchen can see them.

He lets his breath hiss out of his nose. She hasn’t seen him this pissed since...well, the first time she rejected his straightforward advances. She hadn’t known how deep he was in. She was still in a phase where she saw the identical face of her nemesis, and he hadn’t given her enough to refresh those memories to soften him in her esteem.

He keeps looking down at her intently, swallowing every thought that flickers behind her eyes. If it were easier to hide things from him, maybe she’d feel safer.

Instead, not matter how much she holds back, she feels devoured.

“Rey?”

“Yes?” she responds too brightly, twisting away from Kylo.

Leia calls out from the kitchen:

“Ben’s going to pick up Kira, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Uh, what?” she leaves Kylo to clean up the dining room, “it really was no trouble. I mean, I wish he had told me first.”

Leia waves a hand as she arranges the full load in the dishwasher while Matt stands by to hand her the plates that still need to go in. “He doesn’t mind. You’re a guest.”

When she goes back to the dining room, Kylo glances around for witnesses.

“Mom,” he calls, Leia absent-mindedly gives a questioning noise. “I’m going to show Rey the Christmas lights at the barn.”

A few weeks ago, before they were fake-strangers, he had fondly told her about the barn. Han went all out, not on the house, which Leia had creative control of, in making the barn visible from space. He had layered the story with nail-gun mishaps and freezing his ass off to set it up the day after Thanksgiving.

“Good idea. Give Daisy and Matt some time to be alone.”

“Gross, Mom,” Kylo is retrieving his jacket, and bitterly, Rey follows suit.

The snow crunching under their shoes is the only sound for a long time.

She can see it glow in the distance. That barn and its lights are blinding. It makes the whole property look light blue, even well after sundown.

It is soothing. But the ‘get-your-coat-dear’ tactic he has taken to cool her off, literally and figuratively, annoys her.

“I’m still pissed,” she mutters after he doesn’t immediately fly into a lengthy apology.

“I’m sorry I said that,” he repeats in a low voice, “that was uncalled for. But I don’t get why you think it’s going to be less complicated if we lie now.”

“Just for Daisy and Matt to have a nice holiday,” she excuses lamely, “shouldn’t my imperious, fail-proof judgement be enough for you? On loan temporarily from the Cloud City Courthouse, of course.”

“I meant that you have sound judgement, as though that’s such a crime,” he snaps back.

“Yeah, and I’m sure you’re really proud of letting me make an ass of myself over your mom’s last name.”

“You are really reaching, darling,” he shakes his head as he stomps through the snow.

_“I just want your mother to like me.”_

This has hurt her, deeper than he knows. 

The moment of vulnerability does slow his steps, but it was incredibly taxing to her; almost not worth it. Then he looks at her with a soft expression.

“You’re lying to her face all weekend, my love, so I don’t know what to tell you there.”

 _Oh, pity sympathy._ Her blood boils.

“You _agreed_ with me about this.”

“Because sometimes you do act like you’re the only person who can be right, and it’s easier to just go along with it,” he falls back as she trudges on; the twinkle-lights from the barn so luminous and intimidating she can’t help but know with him leading where they are headed.

She always had to be the good one. With Daisy so tentative, Kira doing whatever she wanted, Grandad and even their mother, wherever she was now, had given her this loaded role. _So help me if you start..._

She hadn’t thought anything had carried over from that woman. She thought she had flung herself out in the world as her opposite; responsible and principled and disciplined.

Kylo praised that about her, usually, so what was going on now?

“I’m doing something nice for my sister!” she extends her arms to gesture as if -all-of-this- is some grand machination done by her. “She’s shy! She doesn’t share much with me! I didn’t want her to scare her off! Just because my choice has consequences does not make me the bad guy, Kylo.”

“Because she’s an adult and you can’t protect her forever. You’re treating me more like a problem than a boyfriend, Rey.”

His hands are snug in his coat pockets, his posture firm and composed as ever; but he can’t even look at her.

“Half of me suspects you have so little faith in me that you think this will burn out before you have to tell anyone. And wouldn’t that be neat and orderly for you? Things happening the _right_ way, instead of the way they’re meant to.”

Kylo, her stone Kylo, her Kylo who usually forced sensitivity for her like he was auditioning for a dating website ad, looks close to tears.

Her careful boyfriend; who she had to yank authenticity out of like she was pulling teeth. Crying over something she had done.

She was so focused on Daisy she never realized she was ruining this holiday for him.

“I’m sorry,” her voice cracks, “I thought I could control this. I...I didn’t want to have to face it if Daisy and Matt were what was going to break us.”

He sighs, pulling her into a soft, wool-padded embrace.

“No, I won’t let it.”

The thing about Kylo was, as she learned from those study sessions; he put the fucking work in. He may make it seem natural, but he pushed himself very hard for those successes.

She isn’t the type of person to put a lot of faith in someone else. Because she was the same as him, in many ways.

But Kylo had the faith in her, that she had not had with him, to keep giving. To hide around her apartment while she was having hours-long-silent-skype-calls, to go along with whatever she needed, to seek therapy when she had first seen him flip out over a bad grade to a degree that there was property damage.

"The Accident"

That was a week after he had first asked her out, and she had said no, and stumbling upon the broken chair in the hallway outside their advisor’s office had terrified her.

But he had done more damage to himself, and that was how she found him, in a mess, on the floor.

Holding his bleeding face in her hands while she called an ambulance had set her off that he needed more than to just change his ways; he needed help.

He took it, at her suggestion, and kept his head down to study with her months later, and let her touch his hand when she was anxious about finals with enough kindness to not mention it again until she was ready.

She wasn’t ready until she finally kissed him.

Since that kiss and she couldn’t look back. They could never be friends. And she couldn’t imagine him being anything else but hers.

She doesn’t know how to say that; but he watches her mouth silently attempt to with a kind smile.

“You can dump me for better reasons, like my very backhanded compliments or my taste in Christmas music.”

“That fucking song has been stuck in my head for weeks,” she laughs finally, between tears. It’s only been a few hours being deprived of his touch; why was it such a misery?

“I love you,” he cradles her, swaying a little bit so the embrace has a lulling momentum, “but you can’t always control me, either. I know that scares you. I know you don’t think I can control myself. Trust me. I want to be good for you.”

She clings to him.

“I love you too,” she whispers, realizing Kylo always said it a lot more than she did.

He hums against her, nuzzling close to feel what was muffled by their coats. “There’s a hayloft in the barn, by the way. Warm. Dry. Atmospheric.”

She’s drawn to the red, green, blue, and yellow light. She can’t resist it; with the person she’d rather be spending Christmas alone with tugging her arm towards it.

“How long ‘till they notice we’re gone?”

Not long at all, and when she stays on top, it means no straw gets in her hair.

Kylo likes it that way; she can be a little rough on him, his wound-up girl, and he has access to smack the ass he’s been wanting to _punish_ all day.

She gets to see him red and green and gold from the lights outside, the air warm with the horses and the smell of hay. Her skirt around her waist, his hands on her hips, slapping the flesh of her ass at his whim and cradling her so gently when she cums, hard, as she rocks against him.

It is a welcome detour, and they get it done quickly, like a reconnaissance mission for their romance.

In, out, done.

She picks straw out of his hair as he shows her around the stables. Finalizer; the pretentiously-named show horse. The largest stall housed a white pony named Artoo with a butter-colored palomino; they felt safer together. Chewie, a fluffy-looking old thing, is a retired police horse who can unlatch his stall door on his own and roam the paddock as he wishes.

“This was your childhood?” she asks tentatively, casting him a vulnerable look. It is remarkably quaint upbringing for a man whose blood ran with gourmet espresso.

He smiles, stroking Finalizer from white star down to his nose. The horse huffs affectionately at his touch, nuzzling him.

If her ass wasn’t still sore from all of his previous spankings, she’d find this moment surreally adorable.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, glancing around the barn, “Dad thought he’d sired three free farmhands. Had to do chores to earn a ride to school each morning. Spent homeroom smelling like whatever I picked out of Chewie’s hooves.”

Rey leans her hip against Chewie’s stall, the poofy thing nips her coat delicately, never catching skin in his teeth, just fabric. Playful.

“Was it all bad?”

He sends her a knowing smile. The secret farm boy.

“Not all of it, when you start to love the hell out of these things,” he ruffles Finalizer’s forelock, and the animal jerks its head in a way that doesn’t seem aggressive. Happy to be teased. “Why, you like picturing me in overalls more than a suit?”

She loves her sleek, sophisticated, future-lawyer boyfriend. But she’s hesitant to pick that last piece of hay out of his black hair.

“No,” she smiles, touching her fingers to Chewie’s velvet-soft nose. She’d never been this close to a horse; she is surprised they are so gentle with her. “I like you just fine.”

“We can bring our kids here, you know that?”

Her eyes flicker up, immediately probing for an ounce of insincerity. He just looks happy.

“Kids should be around animals, growing up. Strengthens empathy. Teaches responsibility. I feel less angry around them.”

“You think about this a lot?” she chokes out, licking her lips, and he just shrugs. Torturing her.

“I was going to ask you to marry me this week,” he looks away, his face quivering with this disappointment that just makes her want to die, her knees shake at the sight of his eyes.

She has to hold herself together for one more moment. It takes every once of the control she's been building up her whole life.

“Are you not going to anymore?”

“It was impulsive,” he shrugs, “and I know what you’d say. We’re still in school. After graduation our lives are going to change forever.”

“You _planned_ it,” she realizes, covering her mouth with her palm.

“It was a bad idea,” he laughs carefully.

“A little bit,” he adds after a minute.

The horses around them are breathing sleepily, hay rustling as they yank it down from their feeds. Finalizer presses his head to the bars until Kylo resumes petting him.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t _want_ to,” she murmurs, slipping her arms around his waist. He looks down at her, surprised, his expression gentle.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you,” he clears his throat, “do you want to get married?”

“Yes. But this isn’t-”

“No, it’s not,” he laughs sheepishly, pressing his brow to hers. “But now we can say we talked about it so you don’t slap me in the face when I ask.”

“Kay,” she murmurs, staring at the ground, because he’s fucking knocked her off her feet and she’s not sure she can fight it this time.

And it was the good in him that did that; not the bad, as she had feared.

 

* * *

 

Matt doesn’t want to make out in his childhood bedroom. At least, that’s not why he brings her there after the dishes are put away.

Dinner was elaborate, most of the party groaning in defeat at the thought of possibly fitting more food in. Leia made the graceful decision to postpone dessert until Kira arrived, which would be late, according to Leia. Giving them all a chance to rest off the food. Grandad’s asleep on the couch, so there was no argument.

“Mom has that effect on people. She will be hospitable until you puke. Really kills with the kindness,” Matt murmurs, guiding her upstairs.

“I like it,” Daisy admits softly, letting him guide her two steps above him so he can lean forward to kiss her without bending down. Weird first impression aside, Leia strikes her as honest. No bullshit.

For him, this current kiss is was also daring, and she is quietly stunned.

“I’m not like them,” he shrugs, pulling away, continuing his thought when all of hers had been blown clean out of her head.

How did he keep talking after kissing? She wasn't ready for words quite yet. Not after that mouth.

“Uhh,” she mumbles as he passes her on the stairs. “What does that mean?”

He looks at the floor under their sock-clad-feet.

“Social, I guess. Even if Kylo doesn’t like people that much, he gets what he wants out of them. Ben likes women; so he’s never alone, until recently. Dad has friends in every port. My mom is beloved everywhere. I don’t know what gene I missed out on.”

She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her dress, following him to his room.

“I like you just fine the way you are.”

He tries to wave it off.

“No,” she grabs his hand, holding him still. “I do. I feel better alone with you than I ever have with any other person.”

He smiles, and his smiles are the tip of the iceberg for his emotions, so she must have made him really happy.

“If you hadn’t kissed me, I never would have had the courage-”

He has implied before he had a crush on her for a long time, without even knowing it. He never imagined himself with her. Not fantasizing about dating or even fucking her. He put it to words once, in a way that broke her heart;

He knew it when she was in the same room, and when she walked out, he would immediately think _come back._

He says it was the first time he felt that way about anyone.

And it feels the same when he's in the room with her.

So they go to the same room together; making out on his bed until there’s headlights spotted up the Solo’s long driveway and Kira’s finally here.

It's really late, and the house seems kind of turned in for the night. Dessert might be tomorrow's conquest. 

She is in a weird position to be interrupted, Matt’s hands up her shirt; but she can’t help but smile. This has all felt so weird and out of balance without her other sister. To think this holiday was almost spent without them. 

She tumbles down the stairs like a little kid again, as though Santa Claus came early, to see Kira peeling off her jacket, her hair wet, with one of Matt's brothers helping her slide it down her arms.

Daisy sighs, relieved.

At least Kira and one of the Solo triplets got along. Was it Ben or Kylo? It was hard to tell, and she wanted to see Kira's face change when she saw her, so she didn't want to announce-

_“Kira’s here!”_

But Daisy doesn’t say it.

Leia does, almost tackling Kira in a hug so fierce it made Daisy, on rare occasion, long for her mother. Kira’s got Leia tight in her arms as well, not usually an affectionate person, with her face buried greedily in Leia’s shoulder. Daisy sits down on the stairs. Stunned.

Han enters the fray, hugging both his wife and Kira tight like their long-lost daughter came home, until whichever brother murmurs _‘alright, give her some air, then show her the shrine you built in the barn in her honor.’_

“I’m buying out Price Hutt once a week from now on, just to be in your lane,” Leia cups Kira’s cheek in her hand, “renewing my membership on the 26th. I had no idea you were right there!”

And Daisy can see from her face; Kira goes blank.

_Shit._

“Kira,” Kylo or Ben has a hand on her shoulder. _“I didn’t say anything._ I swear-”

But Daisy did.

Kira shakes her head, looking a little bit lost in the house where everyone jumped up to greet her, her jacket folded in her arms until he pries it gently free to hang it up for her. Han rumbles something Daisy can’t hear, and folds her into another hug.

He stands back as if to give her a moment alone with his parents.

She had never known her sister was this embarrassed about it.

Kira was Kira; fierce, unapologetic, stubborn, strong.

She laughed at Rey’s worries, made Daisy laugh at her own, and never gave a clue she had any. Things would change. It would always be okay.

But now her sister is wiping tears from her eyes as Leia tells her _everything is going to be okay._

Like she needs to hear that from someone.

Kira is so much a part of her she can find herself thinking Kira’s thoughts instead of her own. But now, she feels as though she is intruding on Kira’s life. She crawls silently back up the stairs. 

 

* * *

 

 

Christmas Eve, the girls were crowded into one room and all but locked into it. So grandad could be on top of things. No spying. No peeking.

Daisy never slept that night, usually sleeping next to Kira, who would growl and mutter threats about lying still and smothering Daisy with a pillow. 

She feels the same way next to Matt in bed. Unable to sleep. Anticipation thick.

But it's not presents; it's curiosity.

How do Leia and Han know Kira?

She's up for hours pondering this; even with her perfect boyfriend snuggled up behind her, his hands fanned across her stomach, keeping her feeling warm and safe. She is miles away from this perfect scenario.

There’s crashing downstairs, so disruptive Daisy would think that Santa really was coming down the chimney.

And that's that. She has to investigate.

Someone's in the kitchen. She isn't even _thinking_ about Santa Claus.

She draws to the light of the kitchen, low-lit, cozy, and Kira and one of the brothers are frantically giggling.

Firstly, she is glad to see her sister is clearly feeling better; which further deepens the mystery.

And she is  _prowling_ around the table, her and the other triplet chasing each other. It is too far away to discern a beard or a scar.

He announces;

“I want to know if I can still beat you at arm wrestling.”

She can feel Kira’s indignant scoff more than she can see it. Kira’s back is to her, but she knows it’s there. She knows Kira as well as she knows herself.

“You have _never_ beat me at arm wrestling,” Kira takes a wide legged seat on one of the kitchen chairs.

They lock into position, hands clasped across the table, so easily, they might as well have done this a thousand times before.

 _“No cheating!”_ she whisper-shrieks breathlessly, her muscles chording as they start pressing into each others' hands. His arms are bulging with effort, but he’s also twisting in weird ways, lifting his foot under the table to jostle her.

Kira growls at him as his shoe nudges between her open legs; her cackle shocked and amused.

“What’s that supposed to do to knock me off my game?”

His leg straightens to press his foot harder against her. Kira’s hips give a jerk under the table.

“I think you know what it’s supposed to do.”

Both brothers had been pretty tame for the entirety of the time Daisy spent with them; but his tone is the equivalent of peeling Kira’s panties off without even having to unsnap her jeans.

Maybe Ben, with the reputation?

Kylo also seems pretty deft with words, though.

Whichever one; there is intimacy there that Kira doesn't deflect. 

Instead:

 _“That’s_ not what goes there,” Kira challenges, her face anything but coy, and the lean of their arms in the table tilts to her favor.

This is also where it really hits Daisy she maybe shouldn’t be watching. Her cheeks flame as she hurries back upstairs to the room she’s sharing with Matt.

As she creeps up the stairs, there’s a sound that startles her back into stillness. She turns back just to see it for herself.

Kira is laughing harder than Daisy has ever seen her laugh before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am praying I can get this done by Christmas. There was going to be a bonus Kira scene taking place after the holiday posted around the 26th, but there's more story to this than I had anticipated, so we're going with trying to get as much as possible done before Christmas. 
> 
> Asking genuinely, are you guys going to be bored with Christmas fics by the 25th? I figured you'd kind of lose interest if I'm still updating my "Christmas Story" after that point because we're all kind of over it.
> 
> Matt The Radar Technician is the hottest lover in the galaxy fight me.


	4. tracks in the snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tracks in the snow (The Civil Wars):
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/5KsZSksgeYi3RxIoAAcy5l

They did have a few cocktails in the kitchen before going to bed; but Kira sneaks into Ben’s room on her own free will.

Rey is absent from the guest room when Kira drops her bag off, but that could mean she's squirreled away in the rec room with some casework she over-prepares. Kira needs a complete blackout to sleep in, which makes the garage not ideal when a squirrel startles the motion censor lights outside. So it's likely Rey just cut her losses and asked for a quiet place to study -over Christmas break, like a psycho- instead of arguing with Kira about lights out.

Rey could have the guest room. Kira just needs a place to breathe for a second, holding her flushed cheeks, before she considers if she's really doing this. A kiss between exes? That didn't warrant storming his bedroom. Did it?

This is Ben. And she wants to be there.

Han and Leia would be pretty unsurprised with her crop top and shorts that she wore as pajamas if they caught her sneaking down the hallway, from all the time spent under their roof they’re pretty desensitized to her quirks about covering up; but Ben sits up and whistles at her as her cold feet scurry across his floor.

Her cheeks flush when she dives under the covers.

Nervous to display this much open desire to be near him again.

He purrs, her reluctant affection pleasing him, as she snuggles up with him.

She’s relieved by the cover of darkness, where he can’t examine her closely. Because he would use that light to pry her open if he felt like it, given the chance.

“Missed this,” he mumbles into her shoulder, pulling her flush up against him. She’s had a good deal of whiskey, and they’ve both torn into the cold leftover prime rib from dinner like it was their last meal, and that makes it easy to sling her thigh over his hip, those shorts rolled at the waistband so nothing hides the shape of her underneath.

It is all there under his hands.

Curves at their sharpest. Lines at their leanest.

He touches, chastely, greedily, along her legs and waist, the round of her hip cupped in a large hand.

She can feel his breath brush down her chest, her exposed stomach, and the smile in his voice when he groans appreciatively.

Her core hums with this need to draw him closer, her thighs tighten to pull him in...

“Not tonight.”

He doesn’t stir, body unmoved under her hands on his torso, as though disinterested. Sleepy.

She tries not to take it personally. Her leg goes rigid around his waist, but he holds it there, fingers stroking the arch of her bare foot.

Kira hums, annoyed, but he bends his head to whisper in her ear;

“You’re not getting my cock until you’re in love with me again, Kira.”

“I…” she whines, not knowing just what about that to argue with. It feels massively unfair, all of it, and his soft kiss does nothing to soothe that ache.

Even if it is sweet.

Her insides tingle with his lips pressed to hers, his familiar smell surrounding her, the warmth of his body so close.

Kira isn’t needy, she’s never needed anyone, but this feels pretty damn close.

He strokes the back of her thigh soothingly.

“Remember when you won your first fight? We got barbecue from that place by the high school, and when I tried to ask you how you liked your food, you finally told me about the cut on the inside of your lip so you couldn’t even taste anything but the blood?”

His thumb held her chin steady, his eyes searching her face and she wrinkled her bruised nose as he examined her under the lights outside the barbecue stand. It smelled like smoke, tasted of nothing but copper and iron from the inside of her cheek.

“I didn’t want to go to the ER yet,” she explains lamely, smiling to herself, resting easier in his arms. “It didn’t hurt until later. We were celebrating.”

He kisses the top of her head. Soothing.

“Remember in high school, when we were lab partners? You never spoke to me, and then me and Rey got in that screaming match in the cafeteria, and I thought you were going to kill me by the afternoon. But you didn’t even look up at me when I sat down, picked up the slides, and said ‘I actually thought you had a good point about how she can’t captain all those after school activities without her efficiency the handle all of them dwindling.’ I felt so...vindicated. I wanted to kiss you right there.”

“You didn’t,” she reminds him, snuggling close. He’s not a saint, not her Ben, so he does grab a handful of her ass. She hisses, pleased.

Lab partners who were completely disinterested. She would not be his conquest. He would not stop conquering. 

That faded to flirting, then to friendship...

And then finality.

She searches for memories, but only one comes to mind:

“Remember when you took my virginity, and…”

She fades off.

She had thought the story was funny for a moment, but she feels him tense up.

He has always been uncomfortable with this memory. They dated for a few years even when it started on that wrong foot, and he preferred to breeze past the part of their relationship where they were dumb and accidentally hurting each other before they figured out the easiest thing was to just admit their feelings and spend every second they could together. Even if it was just weekends at home.

His voice is quiet, ashamed, and horrified in response:

“And you didn’t tell me what I was _really_ doing to you, that it was your first time, because neither of us wanted to acknowledge just how big what we felt for each other was?”

Ben panicked, at the time, when she bled. It wasn't a big deal. She was rushing. He was leaving at the end of the summer and she wanted to prove...

What she always needed to prove. That she could.

She was recently out of high school, trying to convince herself that she was her own person, maybe even through fucking Ben Solo, whore extraordinaire, before he left town and never came back. She wanted to _crunch_ her crush like an old soda can under her boot. Defeat it with meaninglessness.

Everyone was leaving her anyway. Rey, Daisy. This one person she could pretend to send away on her own will.

It was the only way to be tougher.

With her effort at goodbye, finally caving under his flirting, she’d thought it would be easier to be lost in a mess of faces he didn’t recall than always waiting, always wondering.

She was also, in her uncertain future, regretting her past notions about saving something like that for someone who really loved her. She didn’t know _how_ to tell anyone she wanted to wait; not the people she made out with, not her friends, not even her sisters. She just kept it like a shameful secret. It was more embarrassing than wanting sex.

She wanted to be in love.

Because she was hopelessly in love with him, even then, even before she was his girlfriend; and she was going to college a virgin for all the good that had done her. What if she felt she was with the right person, and they didn’t want the baggage of virginity? What if it wasn’t the big, principled deal she was making it out to be and if she waited any longer she'd only hurt more when it wasn't special?

And she always had this feeling Ben wouldn’t _care._

Shrug it off. Power through the responsibility. Okay, whatever, tits are tits. 

But she, daredevil that she was, might not fear pain; but that did not mean Kira never felt it.

Ben had reared back off of her at her first muffled whimper.

So much for being tough.

He had seemed _surprised_ she gave in that night; maybe too easily for this to be motivated benevolently. He was trying too hard, trying to make her break this eerie, practiced show of consent with a laugh or a moment to breathe.

She had never pegged Ben Solo to ever be surprised a girl wanted to sleep with him, but he was astoundingly...cautious with her, that night when they were 18.

He responded readily when things proved to not be all sunshine and rainbows.

Like he was waiting for the catch the whole time.

_“Kira…”_

The sound of her name echoes with the same concern now as it did then. She hums, kissing his chest.

“You stopped, and freaked out. And things...slowed down. We could _look_ at each other. Even if it was through something bad. You just kept kissing me, because I wanted you to. And that was really nice.”

“I hurt you,” he cups her leg, as though forgetting the hundreds of times they had sex after that where it were nothing but pure pleasure.

“Yeah,” she replies weakly. “But if it didn’t...hurt, at first, I don’t think we would have slowed down. I don’t think you would have looked so closely at me and tried to figure out what was wrong. I think we would have had sex once and it wouldn’t have mattered.”

He sighs, kissing her.

“Are you trying to comfort me about fucking up? Because this is turning into a general theme.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t tell you first.”

“I should have treated you like you mattered. You...you are the strongest person I ever met, and then I manage to hurt you? I can’t describe how that made me feel, Kira.”

She’s not sure what time they’re talking about anymore. Maybe all of it.

Long distance, for someone as jealous as she was, was hard. Long distance, for someone who valued other people’s opinions so highly, was hard for him too.

He would be glowing at college parties and she would be glowering in her childhood bedroom, watching updates of the life that suited him in real time, or ignoring him to try and numb that awful feeling of doubt. He didn't like being ignored. He got his attention, his ego stroking, elsewhere. And then there'd be more pictures. So she'd do it again. 

At the time, breaking up made sense. _I should not have to feel this awful about my own boyfriend. I deserve more than weekends._

And it was the right thing to do at that point in her life.

It’s like seeing him on that night again, on his haunches, naked and ashamed, staring ashen at the little bit of blood striping her thighs. Him begging to help her fix it, to do anything to make this right again with the question he would ask more than just once during the time they dated:

_“Kira, Baby, what have I done?”_

And her believing, after a few deep breaths, that it would be.

In his arms again, she takes a few deep breaths. She can still feel his shame radiate and it's not how she feels about losing virginity. She feels like how it was supposed to happen. What made them...stick, in an odd way. If it went well, what would be worth remembering, thinking about, learning from together?

“I wanted you so much, and I thought I had ruined it.”

She shakes her head.

“We just both needed to be honest. To trust each other.”

His hand curls around her neck to cradle the base of her skull. “What if I, Jesus, what if I broke you?”

She snorts, punching him on the arm hard enough to make him flinch. “You know that’s impossible."

He laughs finally, his arms tight around her. 

This is what she wanted. To be in his bed again. To feel like this again.

"And the second time…”

She sweeps his hair out of his eyes, even if she can’t see them. She can still feel it open up his face to her. Feel his features soften under her hand.

The second time, he surprised her at her gym, when she was too scared to talk about that night and had avoided him for weeks. Not even afraid of acknowledging the pain, or the blood. It was a pinch. She bled more during _practice_ spars.

But the kissing and the apologizing and all the sweet things he said to try and make it better. 

That had been too intense for her to face.

The second time, he argued his way into her undivided attention as she slung heavy fists at the bag, yelling over her shoulder at him until he yanked her into a kiss that could have gotten him a black eye.

It didn’t.

Luckily, she was using her few privileges to close the place after everyone had gone home. And they were alone.

He ate her out on the mats until her legs shook and then they had sex, cursing and kissing, until she couldn’t help but laugh.

That felt more like it was supposed to be. In a safe place. Feeling good with him. Being touched when she needed it.

“How many times did you make me cum?” she pretends to think, her smile trapped in her lips. In the dark, he would see it glowing if she let it out.

Only this could be a romantic memory to her. Having him lick into her so insistently, humming and purring, on those filthy mats. Her limbs loose from the workout when he put himself inside her. So careful. 

“I didn’t keep track.”

He sounds...embarrassed, so much so she laughs.

“You totally counted.”

“I wasn’t going to fuck you unless it was three,” he relents, sighing into her hair. “And I fucked you. So.”

“You had the experience,” she shrugs, "when you knew what you were dealing with."

“I knew I could make it good for you,” he fidgets defensively, trying to still be _that guy,_ in bed next to her. It is a place of pride that was hard for him to leave. “When I failed at that, I didn’t know...what I _could_ give to you.”

Kira softens. The sex, after try one, was the easy part. The emotions weren’t spoken of, even though it was like they locked into each other, until much, much later.

They just had to know they were there, lying dormant, too fragile to nudge yet. Their entire relationship was guarding _what could be_ until it was finally ready. The wait, the bond they had in guarding it, almost made them forget that all this was about them and those massive, terrifying feelings.

“I want your cock, someday,” she whispers, and it’s as sincere a promise as he’s ever going to get that this is going to work out.

He’s smart enough to know exactly what she means.

“We’re doing this for good this time.”

There's a moment a silence before she turns on the lamp. He raises his eyebrows, squinting in the light and then looking terrified by the smile on her face.

“I know,” she rolls onto her back, letting the loose cropped tank flutter over her chest. This is a practiced move.

The thin fabric snags against two things she knows he’s missed.

“But first,” she sighs, _“I didn’t get you a present.”_

His eyes are locked on her nipples. Specifically, the metal bars through them, because without a bra on it’s obvious what’s underneath.

"You can still punch me," he suggests from the careful distance he's trying to keep from her body.

She shakes her head. "Please give me a hint?"

_“It’s fine,”_ he answers, his voice deep and dry.

She smiles to herself, skating her hands up and down her ribcage. The hem rises just enough to poke one breast out, at least the underside, just before he can see the piercing he loved to suck on so much.

_“Bennn,”_ she whines when he says nothing. “What can I get you? Like, right now. Help me think. I’m in a hurry here.”

He groans, riveted by just the peek at her breast.

“You are a devious one, baby,” he slides his hand across her bare stomach, done with joking, “Now let me touch.”

Satisfied, she lifts the tank over her head.

“I know it’s not a _new_ toy,” she smiles when his lips latch onto the metal and her flesh, playing it back and forth enough to make her hips rock into him, “but it is your favorite.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update is better than no update! We are nearing the end for when everyone finds out about everyone, but i wanted to get something up before January. Sorry guys!


	5. christmas tipsy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Tipsy: honeyhoney
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/3Olu03toKvfdOsJASvH0du

Daisy was always the first one up on Christmas morning. Ever since she was little. Impatient, nervous, secretly worried she would get coal and then methodically listing the uses she would have for coal just in case; to spin it into a positive if she had in fact been bad that year.

_“Santa’s not fucking real, genius,”_ Kira swore at her a few years ago, them sharing a bed on Christmas Eve and being years into adulthood and maybe a decade of knowing that fact. _“Lie the fuck down and wait a couple more hours, please.”_

Matt similarly but quietly begs her to sleep for five more minutes; because they’re not kids and there’s not a single person who would appreciate being up at seven when Santa was not a part of the issue anymore. 

She threads her fingers between his large ones. His room is barely illuminated from the light outside window. A lazy blue glow when the sun isn’t visible yet, but it's coming.

What a wonderful promise that morning is coming. Child-Daisy is dancing inside. Almost dawn. Almost time.

She’s been up for hours, like Child-Daisy. But it’s not over Santa.

It's over trying to process what she saw in the kitchen.

Matt is a welcome, is sleeping distraction. She's too shy to just wake him, and he likes sleeping a lot, so she's not a _complete_ monster. 

She's not going to just wake him. She's-

She nudges his foot with hers innocently, as though she’s just kicking against him in sleep.

_ “Daisy,” _ he drawls knowingly, “please don’t make me wake up the entire house just because you don’t want to wait anymore.”

She huffs defensively, but he’s smiling.

“I’m  _ sleeping.” _

“No you’re not. You’re waiting for presents. You aren’t exactly patient.”

But it's said with this eyes-closed, perfectly open smile that steals her breath. 

_ Love is weird. You notice annoying things about people like they're cute. _

“Yeah, well, you’re  _ too _ patient. What if that leads to us waiting around forever?”

He opens his eyes wide. Hibernation over.

“Waiting around for what?”

_ Shit. _

“Presents,” she whispers sulkily, but he sighs, drawing her closer.

They’ve been circling each other the past few weeks. Preparations, while there were some very pleasurable ones were reserved towards their next steps in the relationship, were mostly geared towards handling fellow triplets, how to find a safe way to exit a social situation where they felt anxious, and a lot of serious craft projects. 

The circles were good. She could use a few more stages to circle each other, check in, instead of diving forward. It made her feel like she could breathe, and breathe with him. Which made her feel safer than any other place besides her sisters.

But waiting for Matt to take his next step...

His pointer finger taps her lips. “You were waiting forever for me to make the first move.”

When she shakes her head, he does the same in return. She had been. That first kiss in the office had been an act of desperation. 

For a moment they’re both silent. Matt sighs, and gently rolls her so her torso rests over his. Her chest to his chest. 

Her eyes flutter down, but he keeps stroking her lips with his fingertip, curling curiously to touch the inside of her lower lip, to feel the warmth of her breath.

“You’re still waiting, aren’t you Daze,” he muses shyly. She shakes her head, burying her face in his chest.

“I know that you’re mine.”

He touches her ear with his fingertips, then weaves them into her hair. She can’t see his blush, but she also doesn’t feel that magnetic, compulsive pull to comfort him that she feels when he is blushing. She melts over him, soothing in her own way. Showing he makes her feel safe. Sleepy and shadowy, he just strokes her scalp, her hip with his other hand. 

The leg thrown across his waist.

He’s really...comfortable with this. This time.

“That’s not what I asked,” he murmurs, pressing her up until she’s seated across his stomach.

This is new. She's been in his lap before, but he doesn't exactly angle himself between her legs without four hours of thorough preparation. Something about head spaces, and spheres, and mental states.

His anxiety...she just wishes that she could make him feel as safe as he did her. There's a nudge.

A telling nudge.

Between her legs, that tells her he wants it too.

She whimpers from her raised position, grinding down on him.

“You want sex, Daisy,” as though it’s not been the most obvious thing in the world. She has no idea what his game is here. She wants it. She wants this brilliant guy to win.

He sighs, pleased this time, when she rubs hungrily back against how hard he is. 

She bites her lip and ducks her face, wanting something so much she doesn’t know how to take it for herself. 

His hands cup her breasts. She trembles when calmly, knowingly, he teases the neckline of her tank top down, baring them. It’s still dark, but cold enough that it feels  _ exposed _ and she shakes above him as his thumbs move in careful, practiced, precise circles. Swirling around, then pressing down and teasing her nipples, and back again until she’s arching her spine and hissing every time a swipe strays outward of where the pleasure is centered.

She wriggles in his lap, sliding down until she meets something hard that tickles between her legs the way she wants. He bucks up once with a suppressed grunt, but focuses on her tits, and the sway of her hips, and the sounds she makes when his mouth greets one nipple in a soft kiss. 

“Thank you for being so patient,” he says in his never-raised voice, and then takes her breast into his mouth.

She groans, crying out just as quickly as she can slap a palm over her mouth. Her other hand weaves into his blonde hair, thankful that his glasses are still on the side table and she can crush his face into her breast without feeling like she’s going to hurt him or break something. 

They’ve broken many pairs glasses from just kissing before. 

He moves his free hand soothingly over her lower back as she wriggles and grinds against his erection while he teases her breast with the other. 

Her whole body is quivering.

“Are you going to cum, Daisy?” he sounds a mix between surprised and impressed; like she’s going a goddamn thing other than satisfy the ache he is deftly building in her. “Just like that?”

She growls, feeling hopeless. _“Close,”_ she whines, pressing back with her face twisting with frustration. “Close, but I can’t. Please.”

She presses against his cock, staring into his eyes. 

Matt is methodical. He goes in with a plan. She’s taken his fingers so many times because he wants to _practice_ something he learned the time before and _learn_ something to practice next time, every time he makes her orgasm. He is really focusing on building up to her pleasure. And she appreciates that. But she feels like…

It’s time.

It doesn't have to be mind-blowing. He could work towards it forever without finding a way to make it 100% perfect. It doesn't need to be, not to her.

She just wants this to feel started. 

“Please,” she pleads again.

Her eyes widen as he covers her mouth with his entire hand. 

“I believe you, Daze, but I have to check somewhere else first.”

He is so no-nonsense that he doesn’t even seem to realize that this is the dirtiest she’s ever felt. When his hand slithers into her pajama shorts to circle her wetness, she’s mindless, crying out into his hand. His fingers crook inside with steady, gentle curls, and she fidgets, seeking more. 

“You  _ feel _ ready,” he considers, weighing their options. He feels so in his own head, like she’s machinery he’s tinkering with, but  _ holy fuck _ if she does want him to do some maintenance. 

It’s weird. 

It works for them. 

She stands up in the blue light, shimmying her pajama bottoms off. Matt stares wide-eyed up at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down so violently she can see it with her glasses off. 

She crouches further back over his legs  to stroke him a few times, shivering at the pulses of warmth she feels against her palm. And how big he is. He has a point to be wary; but if it were up to him they might be waiting forever.

“It’s not just sex,” in a pleasure-crazed moment of clarity, she blurts it out.

He goes still underneath her. Shocked. 

Maybe scandalized to the point of no return.

Then he _groans,_ so hard and hot in her palm, made so by that promise. He does not let go very easily, but he's boneless everywhere but the hard dick in her hands. Needy. Pleasured. Not trying to work on her like a computer.

Maybe this was what he was thinking all along. That she was wound up for the act, not for him, and every time they dipped closer he thought he was satisfying a need for anything but just a need to be close to him. 

That’s not true. That was never true.

But he would wait forever instead of dare ask.

She licks her lips, closing her eyes. “I don’t just want sex. I’m not just...horny. I fucking want you inside me.  _ You..”  _

She starts shaking, because they’ve had to stop before and the idea of stopping here this time, the closest they’ve gotten, is going to kill her.

She lets out a choked breath.

The head of his cock has speared into the very entrance of her pussy. Not enough to call it anything than some not-so-dry-humping with questionable aim. But he’s there. He is there, stroking her skin, sitting up, and looking so lost in her she wants to cry. 

“I’m...sorry,” he murmurs.

It’s so close, she’s so warm and wet she feels like she could just slip down the entire length of him, and he’s angling his hips up...

_ Okay, _ it’s not as easy as just slipping down; but he’s a big guy. 

Daisy takes a deep breath when her first shallow dip stretches more than she’s used to. Dutifully, her boyfriend strokes her clit and kisses her mouth until she relaxes. Focused. Reintroducing the things he knows about the machinery. Navigating the engineering of her cunt like a fucking expert.

"I love you," she admits, and it does her good to say it.

"I know you love me," he finally admits, that blush lighting the room up like the sun still can't, "and I love you too."

It does him better to say it.

With a shudder, her walls squeeze and then release when a circle of his thumb over her clit has her cooing. She slips down his cock an inch or two with a sigh.

Him inside her, even a little bit, feels good. His lips on hers, the way he dips back to check her face, feels good. His skin against hers feels good.

It's all...good. Maybe not perfect. But just so good.

Minutes later, after a lot of squirming hips, cursing, careful instructions, guesses, and tender questions; she takes him deep, her ass flush against his thighs. She’s so wet and so full she doesn’t know what to do with herself, pleading with him to fuck her.

He dives up to secure her to the mattress, under his control now, the thickness filling her making her eyes tear up in the best way. It's perfect. It's as close to him as she always craved to be.

And that’s only how it  _ starts. _

 

* * *

 

Matt managed to keep her in bed and her mind off of it for about an hour. But they have to face the day, and whatever happened between their siblings, soon enough.

“Kylo and Rey... _ really _ don’t like each other,” she shifts nervously. 

Matt is unbothered by this.

“Yeah,” he doesn’t even move, as though answering promptly will allow him to go back to sleep sooner. Her big, sleepy, bear-like boyfriend. At least this time passed out from sex. Really good sex. “It’s okay, Daze. The Solo Triplets tend to have differing effects on people; a lot of them negative. Maybe he and Kira will get along.”

_ “What makes you say that?” _ she squeaks nervously, even though that’s what she had been wondering since she saw Kira with one of the brothers in the kitchen.

Matt sighs, rolling Daisy towards him and hugging her. Which is a nice way of saying planting her face in his huge chest so she can’t speak very easily. 

He was always grumpy in the morning. But a little touchier, a little more assured, now that they’ve both done it. 

It meaning sex. 

She’s still a little in awe, but focuses on the matter at hand.

“Don’t be cranky,” she struggles.  _ “I saw something.” _

“What did you see?”

He lets her crane her neck to look at him, and they both squint curiously, still lacking their glasses, at each other. 

“Kira was in the kitchen with someone...and they were...talking.”

“Daisy,” his limbs go heavy against hers. “We really have to talk about this now?”

“Yes,” she stammers, “because it sounds like they’re...together.”

“Oh.”

“Probably Ben?” she guesses, because of the track record. But she always hoped Kira was too smart for that. "I couldn't see which of your brothers, but Ben likes...women."

According to what Matt has told her, that is the understatement of the century.

“Ehhh…” Matt shakes his head, which surprises her. “He’s been weirdly solitary lately. My mom thinks he’s sick; for Ben, he’s been living like a monk for the past six months.”

“That’s weird,” she touches her lips as she thinks this over. “Do you think it was Kylo then?”

“Maybe,” but he’s not really taking it seriously because he's nuzzling her neck playfully. Oh no. She's awakened a monster, “when they want us to know; we’ll know.”

“Matt! Where does that leave  _ us.” _

_ “Here,” _ he shrugs as though it’s obvious, planting soft kisses on her skin, “You have two sisters. You should know how it works. Dibs.”

She covers her eyes, flopping down onto the pillows.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Hmm,” he closes his eyes, seemingly pleased with himself that he frustrated her to the point that he can sleep in peace. “I got you something nice for Christmas, but if you keep waking me up I’ll swap it out for socks.”

She burrows into the covers like she’s been sleeping the whole time. Scandalized.  _“You wouldn’t.”_

He laughs, more to himself because she’s taken him one hundred percent seriously and he needs to savor how cute it is, leaning in to kiss her slowly and gently.

“I like socks,” she remembers, mindless again from his perfect lips. Like she's victorious. 

He nuzzles the crook of her neck.

“I know. There’s socks too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol happy Christmas Eve, guys.
> 
> I'm so sorry this fic has gone so laaaaate. Okay. We have the plot chapter wrap-up next, I promise. 
> 
> But a happy announcement; I have a lot of triplet stuff I would love to do! So I will be making a general-triplet-series on Ao3 that you can use to find anything involving these characters. Next update it should be in order, as should the big happy ending. Sorry I've been so late on this one!!


	6. done with christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> https://open.spotify.com/track/2R3xLSSt64B7hgn63PGNaG
> 
> Done With Christmas: Summer Camp

Kira looks normal to Daisy when she heads downstairs for breakfast. 

Matt, in spectacular fashion, kept her in bed in the most distracting way possible. 

This is the first time in her life people are awake on Christmas morning before her.

Kira is joking around with _Kylo_ of all people, eating Christmas cookies, acting like her old self. She examines a gingerbread man with meticulous, multi-colored frosting.

_ “Leia, these are too beautiful. Is this prop food? It’s too perfect. Did you frost it with silly-string? Am I going to find out you nuked raw dough and painted it with furniture polish so it would photograph just right?” _

Kylo, and it _is_ Kylo, no beard, pretends to suddenly realize he’s been eating magazine-worthy poison and chokes, grabbing his mother for dear life with a look of ultimate betrayal across his pretty, scarred face.

Matt sees her hovering in her bare feet and guides Daisy into the kitchen, she was waiting like a weird outsider, which is odd only because her sister seems so natural here and  _ she’s _ the son’s girlfriend in this scenario. 

Kira’s smile halts when she sees her. This is an odd advantage of Daisy’s, as it came up at dinner last night, she really did see her sisters play defensive games for her favor. For that break of the tie. And she was the one who told Han and Leia, accidentally, not knowing it was a secret, that Kira was working at Price Hutt.

It is maybe the first time she sees, in Kira's face, that Daisy fucked up.

And maybe that, even though it hurts, might be growth between them. Because she's finally a person, not a second vote, not a way to win. But her sister, a person, a flawed human being.

Kira slumps dramatically, like she’s  _ exhausted _ with Daisy, the second she sees her, and then opens her arms for a hug.

“Merry Christmas,” she mutters, like Grandad made her do it, but she always puts on affection like someone put her up to it and she had to express love under duress.

Daisy’s spine chills at the thought of her sister last night. Flirting in the kitchen, so open and warm.

Most of the time, under duress.

“I’m sorry I ruined Christmas,” Daisy presses her face into Kira’s shoulder. Only her sister can hear, the Solos have given them a moment to greet each other and Matt is currently listing all the chemicals _worse_ than furniture polish found in commercial foods dyes. 

And it’s maybe the first shaky time she’s admitted it.

Kira, of all people, looks surprised to see her viewing things from the negative. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I thought Ben and Rey were going to be the problem, but it turns out Kylo hates her...”

Kira snorts, shaking her head incredulously. “Kylo thought I was Rey in the grocery store and almost came in his pants. Rey and Kylo  _ do not _ hate each other.”

“But I thought-”

“Good morning!”

Rey sweeps in, looking nervously around to see if she’s the last one up. She is also nicely dressed, showered, and wearing mascara; so technically she’s the first person ready, just the last downstairs, and the pros and cons of this seem to be scrolling through her head as she gives Kira a hug.

“You’re  _ suuuuper _ late,” Kira digs dryly, “everyone was waiting for you. I thought you’d know better than to be so rude.”

_ “I’m going to kick your ass,” _ Rey whispers, but Daisy can hear it and she notices from a snort on the other side of the room Kylo does too.

_ “Fucking try me,” _ Kira whispers back serenely into Rey’s ear.

_ “Guys,” _ Daisy hisses. Skype and long silences helped keep the peace between them. Coexisting calmly. This week has been so stressful, and it’s Daisy’s fault.

Kira drops the hug with a small smile, winking at Rey, and holds up her fists  _ -put up your dukes- _ style, while walking backwards to the kitchen island. Rey looks, for once, as nervous as Daisy feels. 

“Was I that late?”

“You trailed me by two minutes,” always the comforter, Daisy, slips an arm around her, “can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” Rey looks relieved, and Kira’s busy judging the artistic merit of a plate of crackle cookies, so they make a subtle escape.

They sneak into a smaller mudroom off the garage, muffled by coats. Unlike the rest of the house, it is slushy, kind of dirty, and dreary. This is comforting amongst the clean, while interior of the farmhouse. It looked so pretty, it was easy to think the animals outside were fake.

Instinctively, Daisy finds Matt’s overcoat and leans against it. The smell is comforting.

Strengthened, she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind:

“Kira hooked up with one of the brothers last night.”

Her own wording makes her cringe, but Rey looks mad enough to  _ spit. _

_ “Ben?” _

Daisy purses her lips. This was maybe something she should have gone into with all the details ironed out. But Rey’s hatred of Ben was something Daisy should have approached with more tact, or not at all, _but what does she do?_ What if things with Kira and _whoever_ she was with last night went so South their families wouldn’t be on speaking terms at her wedding with Matt? 

-not that she had given it  _ that _ much thought-

She needs her older sister, rational and knowing, and she needs her older sister to be  _ calm: _

“Matt thinks it was Kylo?” she tries weakly, maybe diffusing the situation.

Rey's eyes almost go black.

The door almost hits Daisy in the shoulder, she yelps and leaps back.

“Thinks what was Kylo?”

Ben stands between them, the garage door flung open and a mess of white snow spilling out between the trio. He stomps ice from his boots, tugging a hat off of his head. He shakes out his hair like a dog, and Rey is so mad she squeaks with annoyance.

“What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here?”

“There’s horses,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Were you using those legal papers in your bag? I used them to line some of the stalls. Merry Christmas.”

_ “Fuck you,” _ Rey says in a low voice.

“He’s kidding!” Daisy tries, unsuccessfully, to diffuse again.

“Hey guys?”

Kira, the one who threw this into chaos, peers in from the kitchen. “Now that Ben’s here, Leia wants to get brunch started. You ready?”

Not at all.

But Rey is already surging past her into the dining room. 

That was Rey. Attack. Attack. Attack.

Until she reaches the other side.

Kira spins back to them, looking hopelessly lost. Daisy can’t handle this on her own. She needs her big sister: either one.

And that almost hits her harder; they had appealed to her for their side so many times, but what did she do when one of them was mad at her?

She went right to the other.

She was not the _victim_ of this dynamic single every time. It was a balance.

“Did you hook up with Kylo last night?”

Ben, who had been clumsily removing his coat, goes still behind her. Frozen.

“No,” Kira’s nose wrinkles, the silver piercing glinting in the dim light, _“why_ would you think-? Oh.  _ Shit.” _

She and Ben are staring at each other. Eyes wide.

Ben sways behind Daisy like he's going to drop at any second.

“Did you hook up with my brother to  _ get back at me?” _

Ben Solo was a charming asshole; Daisy knew that everyone had a soft center on the inside but this level of broken hearted was a depth she’d never even anticipated from him. The hurt in his voice makes tears dot her eyes, and she doesn’t even know what the fuck is happening. 

Kira rolls her eyes like he’s an idiot.

“Oh my God. Ben, she saw  _ us,” _ Kira crosses her arms. “Right? In the kitchen?”

“Um...yeah.”

“God,” Kira smacks her forehead. “Okay. Damage control. I can handle this. It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“What’s wrong?”

_“Kylo likes Rey,”_ Ben and Kira say together.

“What?”

“I didn’t know Rey cared,” Kira shakes her head sadly, “Damn.”

Daisy nods, processing this information. Not just Kira. Rey too. This was a disaster.

“Okay. I can kind of see it.”

She and Ben exchange a loaded glance.

“I give it a year,” Ben mutters, and Kira gleefully responds:

“They’re going to  _ fucking _ kill each other.”

Kira’s hushed laugh, again, her eyes bright. Standing between the two of them, Daisy has never seen her so soft. She feels like she can’t keep up.

“You guys…”

She takes a deep breath.

“How long has this been going on between you.”

Both Ben and Kira grow somber. Ben shuffles behind Daisy, throwing an arm around Kira’s shoulders. Kira chews a black-polished thumbnail as she considers her response.

“High school,” she says finally, “on and off.”

Ben shrugs. “Since the first moment I laid eyes on her.”

Kira elbows him.

“Fuck you.”

“Okay. Since the first time we had sex.”

“Oh,” Daisy replies, defeated. “Okay.”

“Daisy,” Kira touches her shoulder gently, “this doesn’t change anything for you.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Daisy shakes her head, shrugging off her hand, “You never told me. And now Matt can’t be my own thing. I was trying...I was trying to have something without you, both of you, and it’s...another whole  _ triplet  _ thing.”

Kira internalized a lot. Daisy knew this. Her sense of humor, her ferocity, they all went as a hard outer layer to her big heart. Her insecurity about her job. Her love. Her guilt, misplaced at best, over leaching any nutrients out of the womb they shared that made Daisy…

The runt.

Kira looks crestfallen, trying to explain herself and her years of hiding, but Daisy shrugs it away.

“Please, just be normal for brunch.”

“Daisy, what are you going to do?”

“Don’t do anything drastic on account of us, Daisy,” Ben looks sad for her, sad for his brother, “we hid one break up, we can hide whatever you need us to. Honest.”

She takes a deep breath. No big sisters. No guidance. This will be her thing on her own.

“I don’t know yet,” she shakes her head. “But whatever I’m going to do, just let me have one more brunch with my boyfriend.”

 

* * *

 

_ “-I’m just saying, _ maybe you aren’t so perfect,” Ben leans across the table, “You screw up just like anyone else. And you blame me for the  _ one-” _

“Dr. Skywalker was your uncle and you did not disclose that in your application. That could have been _my_ spot!”

Rey’s cheeks are flushed, more wound up on her alcohol -mimosas- than anyone else at the table. Kira mutely rubs her back, her one means of comforting another human.

It does not help that Kira had frantically whispered  _ “Daisy saw me with  _ Ben, _ not Kylo,”  _ as she sat down to brunch, kissing the top of her head like it made any difference, as if Rey had not already given Kylo a look across the table that implied he could only speak to her under penalty of certain death.  

Kylo is confused, but smart, so whatever it is, her loyal, not-cheating boyfriend sits patiently across the table from her, occasionally nudging her foot for comfort.

Daisy just clings to Matt’s hand like they’re nearing the top of a roller coaster.

Rey now has to process this with Ben openly antagonizing her. 

Kira holds back from stopping either of them from going to war. Watching. Kind of amused. 

The traitor.

She hears her grandad shift closer to Leia to whisper:

“Are you going to interrupt this?”

Leia waves him off, smothering a muffin with jam.

“No, no, it keeps things interesting.”

Han is scribbling on a paper napkin, sliding it to Matt. Matt takes it, writes something back. 

It looks like they’re taking bets.

Kira does pipe in, but it sounds like she’s both mocking and igniting both her sister and Ben.

“I think this time of year is a time of redemption and love, and family, new and old, so maybe we can bury that hatchet…”

Kira playing peacemaker with such an affectation about it, like she is not the most confrontational person in this room, makes something in Rey snap. 

She is not out of line. Kira was out of line.

Kira got to do whatever she wanted: when Rey had to pretend the love of her life meant nothing to her, in front of his family, doing more damage to her relationship than any of her dating Kylo would have done to Matt and Daisy. Kira always got to do what she wanted. She got to stay in the house and move into the garage and scrape by barely clearing hurdles to be an adult; and Rey had to work her ass off and everyone treated Rey like what she did was easy and Kira like what she did was hard.

But she can’t flip out at Kira. She can’t see that far ahead of her own anger. She keeps it on Ben, who can take it, who is used to this from her and handles it like a champ.

“And then you tell him that you saw me  _ cheating  _ on a test so he wants to pull his letter of recommendation? Who does that?”

“I don’t recall this, but I was in  _ high school,” _ Ben leans back in his seat. Unlike Rey, he clearly has no malice. He was always the kind of guy who has a response for everything; he and Rey can go all night with that. “I was an idiot then. And I didn’t say you cheated, I merely implied your answers were too profound for someone of your years, and that made him suspicious.”

“I didn’t get into Yale. Because of you.”

Next to her, Kira tenses, and Daisy looks gray-faced with  _ not this again. _

Ah, Yale. Rey cried about Yale, her one college rejection, when she got drunk like most women did with their exes. Her love for that school did burn true. 

But was probably shut down, really, in the infatuation phase.

Grandad strokes his beard. He has never really jumped at the occasion to assure Rey that Yale was stupid for not accepting her. Maybe just hearing that from him was what she had needed, or hearing that she was special, when he was as egalitarian a parental figure as they came. 

“Rey, we all know you can do anything you set your mind to. If you applied to Yale today, you would not be rejected again.”

“Waitlisted,” Kylo tries, clearly glad to not have to be the one to rise to occasion for  _ The Whole Yale Saga, _ “that’s something to be proud of.”

Leia nods imperiously. 

Leia and Kylo always seem to act as a partnership of leaders, as Han and his brothers are more lax; which is fascinating to learn but devastating to see when she’s been lying to the woman’s face this whole time. 

Leia cuts in with a single step forward from Kylo to redirect. Sensing, understanding, utilizing. 

“Rey, you’re so incredibly accomplished, and the University I went to doesn’t even exist anymore, it all changes with time-”

“Still makes me feel like a fucking failure,” Rey mutters.

The one that got away.

“I…” Kira looks at her plate, folded cat-like in her chair, because she could never sit like a normal human, “I went to  _ community college,  _ Rey.”

For a second, Rey feels she’s being baited, but Daisy pales significantly and casts a furtive glance to Ben and then Kira. 

Ben looks like he wants to kill Rey more than normal.

The mirth is gone from Kira's face, no sign of her usual shit-eating grin. She’s so much like Ben; teflon, hard to pin down, always has a mocking reply…

She curls, defeated, in her seat instead. Deflated.

At this, even Han and Leia are giving Rey a weird look. Like they know more than she does. 

All she had wanted was for this to go well.

Rey’s trajectory has always been forwards. Being the good triplet daughter, not crying about anything, will get her forwards through one of mom’s binges. Being strong enough will get Daisy through being bullied in elementary school. Being accomplished will make her capable of bailing Kira out of jail for whatever shit her mouth starts that her fists can’t finish.

But Daisy is getting through adulthood without her.

But that hasn’t happened with Kira. Not yet. 

Rey has been speeding past her for so long that she doesn’t even know her sister from a speck in the distance. Her  _ sisters. _ The sisters who share her face.

Rey does one thing she’s never done in her life and backtracks.

“I don’t mean-”

“Yeah, but you do,” Kira swallows, “You have a very clear idea for what is acceptable for  _ you, _ and I’ve never fit that. I work in a fucking grocery store. Quit bitching about Yale.”

_ Holy shit. _

Daisy holds her breath as Rey breaks eye contact with everyone at the table.

“I’m sorry,” Rey mumbles. She thought Kira was in a bad place. She thought she was helping.

“It’s okay,” Kira shrugs, quick to forgive, suddenly. Casual about it as she goes back to eating, “you don’t get it, and neither do I, sometimes. I’m just tired of everyone acting like I’m terminally underachieving.”

She pats Rey’s hand, as though she’s the one who needs soothing. “I’m going to be okay. I promise.”

Ben sets his eyes on Kira. Not without purpose, he swallows before he speaks.

_ “I _ got into Yale: and I’m now a bartender.”

Both Kira and Rey’s eyes bug.

“What?” both sisters respond with equal levels of, but oppositely motivated, shock.

“I got into a bartender, and now I work at Yale,” Han, somehow miraculously, breaks the tension and there’s a genuine laugh out of at least Kira. 

“Can we literally talk about anything else?” Matt breaks his silence with a flare of redness creeping up throat.

Daisy smiles, but it looks pained. Like the effort of loving him is bruising. 

“Rey and I are dating,” Kylo blurts out.

_ “What?” _

It’s hard to pin down who is and isn’t yelling that all at once. It might be everyone _but_ Kira.

“Called it,” she mouths to Ben.

Daisy groan and covers her face in her hands. 

Matt shrugs. “Okay.”

Daisy double takes at him.  _ “Okay?” _

“Yeah. I’m happy for you two.”

He continues to eat, and Daisy’s entire posture softens, like she’s relaxed into the idea too. 

"We're gonna be..."

"Fine," Matt, who struck Rey as kind of waffling and unsure, seems very sure about this, "We're going to be fine. I've loved you since high school."

_ "What?"  _ Daisy plants her hands on the table. "We didn't even meet in high school."

He barely moves his face, but he does mumble, embarrassed. "We didn't. Not really. You've waited a long time for me, Daze. I've just waited longer."

Daisy fidgets in her seat, which is less about discomfort, Rey knows, and more about _returning_ to a comfortable place. Her wiggly baby sister. 

“How long have you been together, Rey?” Leia says with a graceful, warm smile. 

She’s saying it to Rey.

She is graciously extending it across the table to Rey, as if to say,  _ now I understand. _

Rey takes it, holds it in her hands, and wants to cry.

“We got together a little after Kylo’s accident. When he was...healing.”

“I couldn’t have gotten through it without her,” he tells his parents, this grand gesture. "She's so good for me, she makes me better, Mom, Dad, and she did not want to lie about this. It's just...an awkward situation..."

At her chest warms. Just this moment of introduction. It was never going to be right. She could never control it. But he helped her, like she helped him. 

Even if she was shooting him looks that they were going to break up,  _ soon, _ ten minutes ago.

Kylo was more tenacious than that, for her. A weight lifts from her, she lets go of her control. 

Matt and Daisy weren’t going to get in the way. Not even Kira and whatever she did with Ben last night.

Kylo is looking at her and last night means everything again. She wants to be in her apartment right now, under the covers or eating brussel sprouts but most of all  _ engaged _ to the love of her life. It'll be okay. They'll figure it out. 

Even Daisy has sagged limply over against Matt's shoulder, relieved, as though she though he would vanish into thin air.

"Now that _that's_ out in the open," Leia says with her eyebrows pointedly raised, her eyes on her food, but it's like she knows something more.

Kira looks slyly to Ben.

“So, bartender?”

Ben shakes his head, laughing. “Everyone assumes I’m more successful by now. I just let them assume."

"You could have told me," she sips from her drink.

Rey wants to gag.

_Ugh. Eye-fucking him._

She can't be doubling, tripling, really, down on a _hookup..._

_ Oh no. _

Kira has this secretive smile for a split second, then her lip trembles, and then she is laughing so hard it sounds like her stomach hurts.

Han nudges grandad, who suddenly has the napkin and is  _ also _ writing bets on it. Two families of traitorous, degenerate gamblers.

“What?” Rey pushes her knee, annoyed Kira isn’t sharing, or at being laughed at. “What, what?”

She doesn’t look at Rey. She looks at Ben.

“I finally,  _ finally, _ beat you bitches at something,” Kira’s voice is powerful and victorious,  _ “I had one first.” _

“And longest,” Ben adds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I started this story having interacted with Lilith a few times on tumblr, with her permission to write more of the triplets. It was always for her. But it was always for an artist I admired and didn't think I was cool enough to talk to.
> 
> And now, I feel safe to say, we're friends and I love her more than -and this doesn't feel possible- just an amazing artist. She's been a lovely friend. She's been so wonderful and supportive to me, especially in the work she put in for a gift -for her-. She drew one of my stories! I still can't believe that!
> 
> Any question I had about the triplets she answered, any conflicting headcanon she let me go to town on anyway, and the story would not be this story without her for obvious reasons, but also some personal ones. I needed this trash triplets this holiday, and I especially needed Kira, who deserves some nice non-holiday epilogue smut. (Pinky promise!)
> 
> Thank you. I love you. I hope you like it. No hay mucho de mí sin ti.


	7. Epilogue

_“Does this look safe?”_

“Not at all,” Kylo is chowing enthusiastically into his hot dog, “But what, in life, ever is?”

“Should a man fear death, if first he has never truly lived?” Ben adds philosophically, his coated with the added risk of spicy chili on top.

Both brothers are eating steadily while Matt stares incredulously down at the food.

He’s not entirely sure what those answers mean. But his brothers are always weird.

Daisy’s been on a cooking bender since they took a couple’s cooking class a few weeks ago. Matt really enjoyed it. They made chicken pot pie. He burned his tongue, and could still kind of feel it where the skin blistered, but Daisy laughed a lot. And when there was something like that for her to check on; she did. Often.

Matt isn’t the most sensitive guy, but even he knew why he was smiling after the first dozen times Daisy texted **how’s your tongue? :(**

Better.

Still dry a lot; but that’s been a thing since before that date.

More from when they started dating.

There’s something about the gentle way she spoons little tastes into his mouth while she works that honestly floors him on the concept of whatever crap he was eating _before_ Daisy.

Chili dogs at Maz’s seem like it’s from some vague, dull life _before,_ even though it’s a pretty common practice between him and his brothers.

But now, he can just hear Daisy’s soft little narration as she plates. It takes a while for a meal she makes to _start_ because she takes him on the journey through making it like a Dungeon Master on a campaign.

“We should probably eat fast,” Matt warns, as if eating at all. He swallows to try and wet his tongue, “We should get to the house before Mo-”

His phone rings.

Their mother.

Guilty, he places the still-ringing phone face-up on the table. Even buzzing, **Mom** in block text makes both of his brothers groan out loud.

Kylo tries to intervene before it’s too late. Reaches across the table to try and cover the phone as if it was watching them.

_“Don’t-”_

“She’s going to think it’s weird if I don’t answer.”

Matt jerks the phone away from his brother and presses the green circle so he can take the call, hitting speakerphone to buy them a few seconds of transitional time.

 _“She’s like a fucking psychic,”_ Ben grumbles, chili sliding down from the corner of his mouth.

Wolfing down his last bites so he wasn’t _technically_ eating when-

“Are you boys out getting food when I’m making this huge dinner at home, _for you,_ so you can just pick at it because you’re not hungry?”

“I didn’t eat anything,” Matt responds, honestly and earnestly with the truth, in this age-old battle.

When they were teenagers, and he had eaten, he probably would have said _I only ate two_ when he had had three _._ And still felt guilty.

“Of course _you_ didn’t, Matt. Ben, are you still chewing?”

“That’s Kylo.”

Kylo _is_ chewing, but recuses himself from commenting.

“You three are worse than the horses.”

Ben’s got his head pressed to the window. “Mom, you raised three sons clearing six feet. That’s over eighteen feet total of men who need food.”

“There is plenty of food at home, where I happen to be cooking. Why are you three together instead of just coming to the house?”

They don’t even have to look at each other; it’s a triplet thing.

Maz’s. Chili dogs. Occupying the same space in understanding silence.

And this is one of the rare times, the only time, really, that the three of them are in relationships they’re willing to talk about.

Matt scrolls through the information he’s picked up in the last thirty minutes at Maz’s while Ben and Leia exchange well-meaning jabs at each other over the phone. This can go one for hours between the two of them; Kylo is clearly texting Rey in the seat next to him instead of paying attention as well.

Kylo and Rey have just moved in together. Rey is interning at a prestigious law firm with Kylo; she hates it. Too greedy. They will, according to Kylo, be offered jobs there at the end of the semester.

Kylo will accept. Rey will refuse.

Ben and Kira are going slower than anyone anticipated. They were very quiet about their relationship. When brought to light, Daisy and Rey tried to dig. Kylo tried to dig. Matt went about it maybe as clumsily as possible.

But there wasn’t much either of them were ready to say.

Ben and Kira looked comfortable around each other. Comfortable, and a rarity on two accounts; _quiet_ about it.

It kind of weirded everyone else out.

“Mom,” Kylo wolfs down the rest of his hot dog as he says it. Leia doesn’t question it. “We’re on our way home.”

_“Is that your mother?”_

Even when not leaning down, Maz barely clears the height of the surface of the table, but from her spot at the end of their booth, she is infinite.

“Maz?”

“I’ve got three Solo boys here,” she’s got a wrinkled hand on Matt’s shoulder, and Ben’s across the table from him. Matt doesn’t like physical contact, but Maz has something about her that transcends the boundary of that, “but I’m so glad I can say hello without sending it through them.”

“Hello, Maz.”

“Did you boys like your food?”

“Always, Maz,” Kylo wipes grease off his lips with a napkin.

“I see Matt didn’t eat anything.”

Matt tries to control the flush rising up his cheeks. Was it rude not to eat anything? Should he apologize? Should he also touch Maz’s shoulder?

Daisy would tell him. Gently. She’d make it easier. Usually his brother did, as he melted silently into the background. They could both pretend to be antisocial; but Matt could own antisocial in a way that made them look like imposters to the very idea of it.

But Maz is already laughing. “It’s okay, Solo. Get home to your mother.”

The party is clearly over; caught between the only two women who rival each other as matriarchs between the boys. Maz and Leia are both aware and equally resentful of this.

They gather up their things. Ben presses a kiss to Maz’s hair-net-plastered brow, thanking her for the fine meal, and Kylo slips extra bills out of his pockets to tip.

Matt follows suit, but in his mild way. He fields the remaining seconds of the phone call with mom. Tips without the added gravitas. Nods at Maz and says _thank you,_ quietly.

He cares about his brothers. But there were often times he felt like their echo. The literally washed-out, bleached version of the three. The only blonde, the one with the glasses, the one who couldn’t talk his way out of a paper bag.

Computers remember data, functions, exceptions. People remember emotions, connection, humor.

His brothers were always remembered around here. His was the name that escaped people while they were still legendary. They would be remembered by _people_ . He felt his lineage flood into the code he put out into the world; but he was often thinking about how far those memories would go until Matt the person would be forgotten because he hadn’t been _enough._

He squints at the screen when his phone rings again; confused by the action before he sees who’s calling.

“Daisy?”

He glances around the restaurant; like her presence on the phone will conjure he up here. It was like how messaging with her felt like she was in the room.

_“Hey.”_

Her voice is thick, throaty. Like she has a cold.

“Are you okay? You sound funny.”

 _“Yeah…”_ she trails off. Distracted. “Are you alone?”

“Uh, no.”

Ben’s hand lands on his shoulder sharply.

“You riding with me?”

Matt lowers the phone. Then flinches and raises it back up to his ear.

Daisy could be saying something important.

Ben’s driving aggravates his anxiety. But Kylo has already left.

“Sure,” he swallows as Ben’s semi-sadistic eyes light up. This drive was going to be hell, “give me five minutes?”

Ben twirls his keys.

“Make sure to make peace with your God.”

And he walks out of Maz’s.

With a swallow, Matt turns back to his conversation on the phone.

“Do you need me to be alone?”

“Uh huh.”

He raises his eyebrows and walks into the filthy single-stall restroom Maz has. He has to duck his head when he’s inside it.

He’s intentionally avoided this restroom since he was ten.

“What is it, Daze?”

He hears her move. Fidget.

Her breathing is weird.

“Are you sick?” he adds, his inflection going up hopefully; not because he wants her to be unwell, but identifying the problem always makes him feel better.

“No. There’s, ah, something in your bag. If you want to try it.”

Matt sighs and slowly digs open his backpack. He doesn’t have anything he’s unwilling to share with Daisy; but they are two people very much focused on possibilities and outcomes. If Daisy can just sneak things into his backpack, it meant he couldn’t hide things from her in his backpack or she’d accidentally find it. Therefore, the backpack was not the designated private space he had anticipated, and-

His hands hit something he can’t name from the things he knows to be in there.

Confused, his withdraws it. He anticipated a brownie, a stuffed toy, a movie for them to watch when he got home.

She always did nice things like that.

But right now he’s staring at a remote in his hand to an unfamiliar device.

“Did you need this fixed?”

“No,” she answers, right as he presses a button off the center.

There’s a squeak that leaves her lips.

He hears Daisy humming on the end of the line.

Whining.

“Daisy? Are you alright?”

_“Mhmm.”_

High pitched and breathy.

“What’s the remote for?”

“For something inside me,” she whispers, “I didn’t think you’d turn it on before I told you. I’m sorry.”

“Like a,” his head swims, he actually makes eye contact with himself in the mirror because he can’t really believe it, “like a toy?”

“We can stop…”

His finger snaps down on an obvious -up- icon before she can finish that sentence.

“No.”

He hears her sigh. A moan.

And giggle when he presses up one more setting, ever eager.

“How does it feel?”

“My thighs are really hot,” she admits. “I like when you talk and change the settings around at the same time.”

“Oh really?”

He turns it down. She gives a pouty sound.

“You want to video call?”

Yes.

He knows how to work the gadgets better than her. Or himself.

He props his phone up on the sink, leaning back against the tile wall after he opens the facetime window. He can hear dishes stacking in the kitchen on the other side. Maz’s was not a quiet place; part of the reason it was a place to catch up for the three brothers -all anti-social in different and sometimes conflicting ways- was there was nothing you had to say that you would not yell so it made conversation efficient and soaring.

Rey is standing in her bathroom, shakily propping up her own phone on the counter. Her romper is around her thighs, her entire body bare and trembling.

He keys up two more settings just to see her legs wobble. Her tits are flushed and bouncing. Her cheeks are so red he is, impossibly above all else, longing to kiss them.

“Tell me,” he sees her narrow hips drag back and forth, gyrating on something she can’t escape.

“It’s….h-humming inside me like you do, when you like the taste.”

“I always like the taste.”

He’s gotten a lot pushback in his life from his need to correct people. Daisy especially, in the early days when they were just working together, had told him it didn’t leave room for nuance.

But in bed, she likes it. He doesn’t waver or fuss.

When he feels right, he says it, and it’s the right kind of stern for her to work off of.

“Play with your clit. Stroke it for me.”

Obediently, her fingers do a gentle circle between her lips. She watches him through the camera, but he can’t do more than stare and swallow and fist his hands against the tile.

“Stroke yourself too,” she whispers, “cum with me.”

Honestly, he feels like the worse thing to do would be to not listen to her for everyone involved. Maz’s patrons when he had to walk out of that bathroom. Ben in the car. His family over dinner. Himself until he got over to her apartment.

His strokes are a little more purposeful. But she can watch him, which seems to be all she wants.

“Where’d you get this idea?”

She grins bashfully. “Last night.”

She’s the only person who’s made him feel in control in his life. Confident enough to show her things he cared about. Confident enough to try things he never thought he’d care about.

Confident enough to tie her up and make her show him everything-

With a little smile, he turns the remote all the way up and listens to the muffled sounds of Daisy’s thankful shrieks.

 _Himself_ is always enough with Daisy.

 

* * *

  


Kylo has changed the channel forty-five times in the last three minutes and Rey still hasn’t noticed.

She insists she’s fine, but her white fingers have that hospital-hallway cage over her lips and jaw, like a surgeon in a soap opera has announced _it’s inoperable_ and she’s about to swoon to the floor. The look is defensive. Worried. Her stare building an impenetrable wall surrounding her and whatever she’s been thinking about.

It’s not a look that puts him at ease. So if she’s going to insist she’s fine, he’s going to keep changing the channel until she notices.

It’s been three minutes:

_“Your time starts-”_

Click

_“-Syria-”_

Click

_“-quererme como a mí me gu-”_

Click

_“-need for spee-”_

Click

_“Lightsab-”_

_“Kylo,”_ Rey’s voice is harsh, and her eyes finally squint shut.

It worked, at least, even when she’s rubbing the annoyance out of her wrinkled brow.

“Rey.”

Despite her pragmatic, sunny outlook and his dramatic, dark one; Kylo knew they were linked by an intrinsic sameness. It’s why he took a break from his studies to ask her out. It’s why he was a destructive mess when she didn’t view him as good enough for her.

And it’s why life felt so good now.

His siblings, and hers, were somewhat squeamish about the almost incestual vibe of their partners. Rey’s sister going to bed with his mirror image, the probability that the girls, who had a baseline of sharing almost everything, probably compared a few very private things about all of them on one of those psychotically-long Skype calls.

Daisy was the only one who viewed the situation positively, called it _cute_ over drinks amongst the six of them, and Kira had looked ready to dive through the nearest window and Ben was tensed to chase right after her.

But he and Rey were the oldest, the leaders: and while she cringed at the idea of anyone close to her dating Ben, it made an odd sense to Kylo.

They understood each other.

While quantity could seem fetishistic and objectifying; he had found the opposite. That they were rare amongst the universe and could find a connection in what they are. Something, he was too frightened to admit out loud, mystical about it all. Rey, at the center of Three Graces. Him, the middle head of Cerberus, guarding Hades. It made sense; symmetry, order, balance.

She finally turns her attention on him.

“You’re mulling me over,” she half-growls, her hair falling over one shoulder.

“You’re not filling the silence very well,” he taps the side of his head, above his brow.

A dangerous place, he once warned her with the same gesture, a regular snake-pit.

Her gaze softens.

“The case I’m handling,” she clears her throat, “the plaintiff-”

He nods slowly.

They’ve been over this.

A minor. Seven year old. Child abuse case.

Addict mom.

Lost siblings.

Not dead. But lost.

That’s what broke Rey.

“-I just feel like I’m not doing enough.”

He has to steel himself to her broken, hopeless tone. If he gets sucked under, there will be no going back.

And she didn’t go to him for placation.

She went to him like this for common sense.

He shuts his eyes. “Rey, you cannot adopt every person you help represent just because you feel bad for them. This is the first case you’ve even worked on; that does not look good if you cannot keep a professional distance.”

“Well,” she shook her head, one sharp motion, while she chewed on her thumbnail, “it just matters to me, okay?”

He brushes a loose curl of hair behind her ear.

“I’m not saying it can’t. But you’re going to be a lawyer, not a superhero.”

Her lips wobbles. Determined.

He _loves_ her.

“So?”

 _“So,”_ he sighs, draping an arm around her shoulders. Pulling her close, and she comes down to rest on his chest, even when she growls as she does it, _“so_ you’re going to be a great lawyer and help a lot of kids. Change lives. But you can only do that if you focus on the bigger picture instead of tanking this case over a conflict of interest. It sucks. But you’re going to have to detach.”

There’s a hot, wet breath against his neck, and tears slide down his skin.

And they lay on the couch like that while she cries it out. It’s not the first time.

It will probably not be the last time.

“Rey,” he rocks her gently, “you are going to save the fucking world. One step at a time, okay? Help win her case first.”

He presses as many kisses as he can into her hair. She clings to his shirt.

"You don't always have to try and prove you're a better lawyer than me."

“You don't always have to try and prove you're a better person. One of these days, you’re going to pick out our kid, and I’m not going to say no. So you better be ready when you do.”

He laughs as he says his warning, and while she doesn’t, it does relax her. It is a crazy idea and a true statement all at once. But they can’t adopt a kind now; not one on a case she’s working on, and they can’t take in a kid months before exams, and even then if she started breaking at every tragedy now they wouldn’t make it through one year of her employed after graduation without a family of ten somehow assembled from broken parts.

She nods roughly, finally cuddling into him.

It was such a fucking victory. Whenever he says the right things.

He clings greedily for a moment, because selfishly she feels so good in his arms.

“I’m staying on with the firm,” she wipes tears out of her eyes.

He lets out a sigh.

They’d talked it out; the offer was most likely going to her. She didn’t want to take it. She hated this firm. She was counting the days until she could breeze in to intern for a Holdo, a professor who adored Rey.

Rey was _excited_ to work with Holdo.

Then the spot offered to her would be open at the end of the semester.

He, even as a second choice, wouldn’t pass on it.

“To stay on for Abby’s trial?”

She nods pathetically.

“These fucking sharks are circling her and she needs someone in her corner.”

He squeezes her.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Kylo,” she sits up, peering down at him with suspicious, red eyes. “You’re _supposed_ to be mad at me.”

He doesn’t even lift his head. But she is hovering over him like an indignant predator.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to be so angry.”

She stroked her thumb over the scar at his cheek. “But this entirely fucks your plan.”

He takes a deep breath.

“Do you want to take a miserable job just to take care of Abby the one way you know how-”

She opens her mouth to answer automatically, but he presses a finger to her lips.

“-or, you take the better job you have lined up, and I stay on at Canady and Veers, and I will fight for this kid like she’s my own.”

Rey goes still above him. Her hands squeezing his shoulders.

She is red in the face over the offer.

But she hasn’t answered it yet.

Kylo clears his throat, “Will you trust me?”

“I always...do things on my own.”

“Well that’s not true. I’m just sparing your poor sisters an entire year of listening to you bitch about Veers’ face.”

She laughs softly, and even through the joke, he sees he has done something right.

“Because you have them, you’ve always had them. As though that matters; you’re such an _oldest,”_ he makes a scolding face and pinches her ass, hard.

While she yelps, he continues his assault verbally:

_“-and now you have me.”_

“Kylo,” she leans down and kisses him, “keep her safe for me?”

When she whispers like that she could get him rip his own heart out and eat it.

“You’re the one who’s too soft for this case,” he squeezes her hips, dwarfed in his hands, until Rey shivers, “don’t forget how fucking merciless I am. Her father will never know peace for the rest of his life.”

Rey rarely encouraged him when he was being bad. At least...being bad in ways that didn’t involve his tongue on her.

But her eyes are glowing, and her fingers are in his hair, and she wriggles hungrily against his body.

She kisses his scar.

She acknowledged his darkness and let it curl up to rest in her lap. He gentled it until she could stroke her fingers through his hair without being bitten.

Their differences existed symbiotically. But he felt that core sameness. So much sharper than the loaded “opposites attract” their families attributed to their coupling.

She wants him to be cruel and ruthless for her. Exactly what he is.

Just for the right cause.

Him attacking, her defending.

His heart almost stops when he hears the soft murmur under his chin;

“Hey...do you want to marry me?”

 

* * *

 

The red-bricked Kenobi house greets Ben like an old friend.

He wasn’t there often, in the past. It was usually when it was empty. He didn’t know if the sisters were like his brothers, cleaning out the kitchen of food at all hours of the day. If there were arguments in the hallways over taking stuff from each other. What the chores were like, if they prayed before meals, what tV shows they watched together or in eclipsing pairs.

He’d been snuck in enough times to know the bathroom from a linen closet, to know their tap water was just on the intolerable side of copper-tasting, and that he didn’t fit all his limbs in Kira’s bed and yet it was the best night’s sleep he ever got just the same.

He swallows. Looking at the brick, the almost tower-like structure snaking up one corner of the house; an observatory exposure in the roof in the form of a skylight meant for stargazing.

Great for letting in moonlight and great, in that regard, for sex.

Kira’s star-stricken freckles next to his skin glowing pale. He didn’t even ruin it by talking.

Sincerity was a rarity for him.

It was prophesied by about every adult in Ben Solo’s life, his father most knowingly and wisely agreed, that his sense of humor was only going to take him so far until the end of that rope went taut and he could move no further.

And at the end of that rope was Kira.

Over Christmas, being the only person who knew Kira and finding out that no one else did was an abrupt cold shock.

He thought she’d been secretive with him.

He actually knew her better than anyone else. That was _scary._

She’d been willfully alone for all this time.

Ben stares down the end of the driveway. He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. The serene, silent-looking garage looks empty.

But then-

The music starts blaring. Some neighbors were stopping in to talk to Kira’s grandad while Ben was talking to Kira’s grandad; she’s bound to get a noise complaint from the Community Board at some point but that would hardly stop her.

It would probably encourage her to get better speakers.

Kenobi took a shine to him, which was nice. They’d met before; so he honestly hadn’t expected that. Or maybe under the circumstances of Kira’s lies, her grandfather was relieved that it had been love bringing this dark, tall man through their house on the occasional Friday night, picking her up to whisk her away. For the daughter most openly regarded as, if not trouble, difficult, it did feel odd to see the old man sitting passively in an armchair as Kira was tossing around the house to pack a weekend bag. She was just going to the Solo’s, and Ben Solo had built years of experience on the absence of male authority in young women’s lives, but even he prickled at the serene, not-even-questions offered up by her grandfather.

“And who is this young man?”

Like he was asking ironically.

Kira was checking a tee-shirt she had retrieved from the laundry room for stains. It _was,_ but clearly not up to her standards to wash before wearing, so she crammed it in her duffel.

“My dealer,” she responded crisply.

Her grandfather had merely laughed.

Old Kenobi was always pretty hands-off with Kira; who seemed to genuinely believe meeting _her dealer_ would ruffle her grandfather less than her boyfriend. At the time, they were all jagged-edges, Ben and Kira. They laughed about it in the car. When he called, and Kira bit out a coy _who’s this?_ Ben would answer; _your dealer._

It made it harder to talk to her grandfather as a boyfriend. Ben’s ears are still a little red from the talk. Making his case for Kenobi’s last grandchild still living at home.

Not that Kira viewed it that way; according to her, the garage counted as _moved out._

There is one big flaw in that living situation though.

With a smirk, he clicks the button of the controller in his pocket.

And hears a yelp somewhat smothered by the noise of the music when the garage door starts to rise up.

_“Ben!”_

Her shirt was lifted over her stomach, she was probably in the process changing clothes, and looks ready to kill him as she yanks the hem back down.

When Kenobi handed over the garage door opener; he did warn Ben that if Kira murdered him, his loyalty was in his grandchildren and authorities would likely never find the young man’s body. But if he lived, clearly he meant a great deal to Kira.

He was beginning to see how Kira and her Grandfather were actually a lot alike. 

She fumes at him now, arms crossed over her chest, her work smock flattened out on the floor to where she tossed it off. The March chill has given her sizable goosebumps up and down her strong arms.

She's beautiful like home is. 

He wants to haul her onto the mattress on the floor she calls a bed and skip his shift tonight and the rest of the week and live in that garage until they make up for lost time.

But they’re taking things slow. It’s complicated. They’re together but they’re not. He has _never_ in his life taken things slow; and certainly never with Kira. She was the only person on the planet who moved faster than him.

It was just about her deciding to move.

But it seemed worth the effort this time around.

He was getting a little bit of a sick satisfaction from it, Kira trying to sneak past his defenses with sex before love, and getting to shrug her off and play the innocent.

It’s been a lot of hanging out. Spending time with each other. Lounging. Getting food. Listening to music.

They’d make out in his car after concerts and he’d practically bail her out onto her driveway like she had a curfew at the end of the night.

“Three little words, baby.” he would lean through the open car door, with Kira outside, flustered and shakily zipping up her jeans.

“So you know them,” Kira would cross her arms after she ripped her bunched-up jacket out from under the seat.

She’s giving a similar _enraged_ look right now before she yanks a hoodie over her head. Maybe because she’d implied, on no uncertain terms, that she was beginning to take his rejections very personally.

“This isn’t a good time.”

The music shuts off anyway.

Kira pulls down her sweatshirt. He stands in the way of the garage doors she desperately wants shut.

“Do you think I’m being weird?”

Her thickly-lined eyes widen.

“What the fuck? Breaking into my room? _Yes.”_

“You live in a garage, baby,” he waves a hand, remote snug in his grip, at that point, “but I mean about sex. Did I push that too hard? Did I make it look like I didn’t want you again?”

“Ben,” she rubs her eye with the heel of her thumb. Annoyed. “This is a bad time-”

“Because…”

It always starts with a joke. He fiddles with the buttons. The door shutters down behind him. Closing him in.

It starts with a joke.

But not this time.

“I want you. I’m not...we’re not the same as before, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us. I fucked up last time. And so did you. That’s something we did. So we’re going to go at this like there was no last time for one very important reason. I poured half of myself into you, Kira, and my only regret was that I held anything back. Because this time I am going to make you take all of me. And I’m going to take all of you because I want there to be enough room inside you to do that.”

She’s got that dark, incredulous, _so fucking delicate_ look in her eyes.

He is called to the things she told him with that look in her eyes.

_Rey was the good one. Daisy had her health issues, but she couldn’t help them. And she was good like Rey. I was just bad. Willfully bad to the point my mom would tell me she didn’t want me anymore._

And she’s got her jokes too:

“What, did you write this on the drive here or something?”

“Kira,” he warns, because he can feel her try to creep away from this, “And after we do that, and you’ve taken all of me that there is to give, and you let me take you; I am going to fuck the hell out of you. You are going to get noise complaints like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll make you scream in languages you don’t even _speak._ We are going to fuck for every time it wasn’t us together; maybe twice that amount because I want to do more than cancel it all out. Maybe we'll do something stupid and fucking crazy like _make love._ When we weren’t together, I was talking to you in my head until I felt like you were there. All I wanted was for you to be here. I’m not done with you. We’re not done.”

_“Holy shit.”_

That didn’t come from Kira.

As there is a modest slow clap instead of a response.

Ben freezes and glances around the garage.

_Clap. Clap. Clap._

Kira’s laptop is open. There’s a Skype window on. And Daisy is gawking at him.

And Rey is clapping.

“Glad to see you’re still trying to beat me for Speech and Debate,” Rey does not hold back her smile, “But that was always _my_ championship, not yours, Ben Solo.”

Kira’s breathing is uneven. Her face is very red.

Ben just stares at her.

“They heard all of that?”

She swallows.

“I did warn you.”

“But he was doing so well on his own,” Rey appraises dryly, and Daisy is waving her hands and placating that _this was a private moment and Ben should get a chance-_

“Okay, show’s over.”

Kira closes the laptop. covering her face with one hand.

The garage is silent.

She takes a deep breath.

He doesn't know where she'd start; in her shoes, he'd be lost for words for some time.

“You’d talk to me in your head?”

That was something he wishes he had left out. It did sound weird. Crazy. Obsessive. Stalker-ish.

He nods.

She sort of laughs.

Sort of.

Disbelieving.

“I wished you ever left my head,” but she shakes her head, “but you didn’t. It’s only been quiet since you...since you’ve been back.”

He feels all the tension in his body leave through a sigh.

Kira’s eyes close.

"I made space for you for all this time. I tried to fill it with other things. But maybe its just because you're supposed to be back."

"We can approach this differently, whatever you're ready for. We can keep going slow-"

She snorts out a laugh. 

“I actually think this no-sex bullshit has not reached a breaking point because of _me,”_ she tilts her head to the side, her smile evil enough to send a chill through him, “because you just ripped open my door with a prepared speech for how meant for each other we were when I haven’t made a single complaint about your self-imposed abstinence.”

“I didn’t-”

Fuck.

She was annoyed about it, yes, but she was totally right. They've been doing alright with that. She didn’t break. He did.

Making mountains out of her minor molehills.

He might be, a little bit, projecting some stuff. 

Some out-of-his-goddamn-mind lust for her.

“Is Ben Solo wants to wait until marriage, I am committed to be there for you until you’re ready,” she is biting down on her own grin, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Kira,” he growls, hands fisting at his sides.

“Ben,” And his name sounds so fucking good. Like it makes her happy from the inside out just to say it and have him hear it, "you weird motherfucker."

“Yes?”

“Come here.”

He steps towards her.

When her nostrils flare, a tell of nerves more than fury, but her furrowed brow hides that well.

“I love you. And I--”

_“I love you too.”_

He broke before she did. He broke so bad. He was playing it so cool about making her wait; and he now wants her so bad he snapped and is literally _shaking_ for her right now. 

Kira played him so well. 

He’s there. He is taut at the end of that rope. And here she is. He tenderly cups her chin in his hand. A thumb rubs away that little circle of band-aid that covers her nose stud for work. She always blushes when she forgets to take it out before he sees her. As she does now.

“And,” she takes him back to the point before in interrupted, clearing her throat, “And I need...someone to check out this mole for me.”

She starts to hike up the back of her sweatshirt.

That’s as far as she gets on her own.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fun things happened this week:
> 
>  
> 
> [1\. This fic was featured on the Smut Hutt Podcast. Thanks, ladies! Love you!!](https://soundcloud.com/thesmuthutt)
> 
>  
> 
> 2\. It was my wife Lilithsaur's Birthday! This is a belated follow-up gift; I hope you like it my love!

**Author's Note:**

> For once, this has to be the chapter count I promised because of format. Tentatively, POV-wise it's supposed to be:
> 
> Chapter 1: Rey/Kira/Rey
> 
> Chapter 2: Kira/Daisy/Kira
> 
> Chapter 3: Daisy/Rey/Daisy, and whoever I need to revisit to wrap up properly.


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